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Statistical Tools For Detecting Electoral Fraud
RockDoctor writes "A recent paper published in PNAS describes statistical techniques for clearly displaying the presence of two types of electoral fraud (PDF) — 'incremental fraud' (stuffing of ballot boxes containing genuine votes with ballots for the winning party) and 'extreme fraud' (reporting completely contrived numbers, typically 100% turnout for a vote-counting region, with 100% voting for the winning party). While the techniques would require skill with statistical software to apply in real time, the graphs produced in the paper provide tools for the interested non-statistician to monitor an election 'live.' Examples are discussed with both 'normal' elections, fraud by the techniques mentioned, and cases of genuine voter inhomogeneity. Other types of fraud, such as gerrymandering and inhibiting the registration of minority voters, are not considered."
We can't have that. Who do we call to get this outlawed?
Without tracking who voted for whom, it is impossible to detect any kind of voter fraud (besides more people voting than are eligible) with 100% certainty.
Vote fraudsters would simply rig the vote to some degree under the level of certainty that the statisticians use to watch for fraud.
Gerrymandering is not exactly fraud. Intentionally drawing lines to create voting districts in a way such that it favors one political party over another is perfectly legal (although obviously not desired). Gerrymandering can be used for good too such as creating voting districts consisting of mostly Blacks or other minorities so they can elect a (favored minority) representative and have a say in the political process.
... dare I ask how one pronounces "PNAS"?
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-72591227/
Except you cannot Gerrymander on the basis of race. Quiet, you.
http://www.adversity.net/special/gerrymander.htm
You importantly raised the issue of abandoning the rule of law, which has been happening here in the USA with alarming regularity (a purist would say Lincoln was the worst first example, though you could find more before him). I wish I knew the name of it but there was a wonderful 10 minute video that explained the difference between a republic (and its literal translation as the public thing, meaning the rule of law) and how democratic republics are at risk of becoming lawless mob ruled states, as you describe.
Al Franken can thank his buddies for making sure the "voters' intent" was judged in his favor by just enough to swing the 2008 Senate race in his favor.
Gerrymandering is the creative drawing of district boundaries to ensure a desired outcome. It's not a good thing, but it's hardly fraud, since there's no disconnect between who got the votes and who got elected.
Intimidating voters is an evil thing — using extortion to influence an election. But once again, not fraud.
Not all evils are the same, which is why we have different laws to cover stealing from a bank with a forged check and stealing from a bank with a gun.
Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, among other actions, which were in violation of the Constution, and illegal. Therefore, my statement is factually sound. I did not make a value judgment, just a statement of fact - many purists do indeed cite Lincoln as one of the first presidents to grossly violate the rule of law. A better question would have been, "Why?", which is what I've tried to answer here. Your attitude is really uncalled for, unconstructive, and ignorant.
All you dumbass Americans should read Greg Palast's book "Billionaires and Ballot Bandidts" to see what a completely broken electoral system you have.
You are aware, I hope, that The Suspension Clause allows for habeas corpus to be suspended "...when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."
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Yes, but the outcome is certain when something can be used by politicians for either Good or Evil. It's statistically proven their choices will not be good.
The use of it to imprison Copperhead Democrats, who were publicly protesting the war, and not otherwise a threat, except to Lincoln politically, pretty fairly casts doubt, at least, on the legality of his use of it in that case. Habeas Corpus cannot seriously be expected to be legally suspended to violate first amendment rights. What do you think?
That 'voter turnout/votes winner' test - this is well know and statisticians have long used it to show how impossible election results are
For example Mexico 2006, the provinces where the opposition party was strong reported an abnormally low turnout while Calderon's (Govt seeking reelection) was initially believed to be losing, then provinces where he was likely to win, they reported extremely strong turnout, and massive majorities to him. Swinging the election with a statistically impossible last minute swing.
http://www.lalkar.org/issues/contents/sep2006/mexico.php
So how do US election fair?
I can see Russia did the 100% turnout/ vote for Putin thing so common in dictatorships. I wonder what happens when you use these tests against USA?
...to keep Ron Paul off the ballot? Personally, I see it as the 'extreme' kind, the kind people should be in prison for.
I see they've used the recent parliamentary ('11) and presidential ('12) Russian elections as one of the inputs, and they do indeed show some nice graphs there. Well, good to know that at least there is something good for science coming out of that mess.
Don't forget John Adam's Sedition Act.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Can we please cancel the iraq war if we find out Bush was wrongfully elected because of the Florida issues
There's 4 million people likely to vote Democrat that don't have the Government issued ID card in Pennsylvania alone, a capacity of 100,000 ID cards a month.
It's October, so you go figure whether they can get an ID card in time to cope with this law change!
Republicans 1% are scum for undermining democracy like that. How are Koch brothers any better than Putin's backers?
I'm not saying that all of his actions were properly justified, just that his suspension of habeas corpus wasn't completely (or even mostly) unconstitutional.
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Arguments abound for both views. At least one SCOTUS member disagreed with you. Given the obvious unethical nature, and the tenuous claim to legality, I'll stand by my assertion that purists believe Lincoln acted illegally. I doubt many people could convincingly argue that Bush II or Obama have not acted illegally. http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/vance4.html
Damn I wish I could edit. Meant to emphasize that the language around suspension clearly indicates only in case of rebellion and public safety. I can't buy for a minute that free speech being exercised qualifies either of those legal standards, hence, it was illegal (the argument in the Vance essay notwithstanding, which I think is needlessly complex, but IANACL).
I'm not sure about videos, but the Federalist Papers point specifically explain how the US Constitution prevents a mob from taking control.
The basic problem, though, is that one man's group of motivated citizens voting for what they think is best for the republic is another man's unruly uneducated mob. If you truly believe that the citizens are incapable of electing not-terrible leaders (or, for that matter, weighing evidence fairly when seated on a jury), then what you're really advocating is some form of dictatorship.
I am officially gone from
Seriously. The whole point of the law is to make sure people are only voting where they live. In Wisconsin at least, IDs for voting are free. Yet, people cry "disenfranchisement", as if somehow anyone, even someone who has no job, can somehow survive without a state issued ID. Can someone please, without frothing at the mouth and namecalling, help me understand what the actual objections of "Wow, you should be able to prove you're voting where you live", is a problem? Especially when, see previous re: State issued ID cards being free?
This gives 'Latitude' to the Obama Staffers at the White House on Electoral College Engineering.
They Win.
We Loose.
The ignition for a bloody revolution.
XD
For whatever reason, I couldn't access the article. But was there any reason they didn't use a more easily accessible data set, like the Republican and Democrat primaries?
Conservative operatives already know the best way to detect fraud (hint: if you are a democratic voter living in a democratic district in a battleground state, you are committing fraud). After all, we all know that voting fraud only comes from the democrats.
,bR> Voting suppression, on the other hand, comes from the republicans. Too bad they don't just cancel each other out.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Saying the voter % among minorities is up in Georgia is not the same as saying that Pennsylvania has implemented a voter ID law that requires a government issued voter ID that they don't have the capacity to issue.
Effectively a lot of voters will not be able to vote because they won't have that ID card, are not able to get it in time and NO SURPRISES, that demographic is largely Democrat, and the law was passed by Republicans.
I stand by my comment.
The Republicans 1% ARE scum for undermining democracy like that.
*The reason they fell was more due to external aggression than any internal problems. It is possible, for example, that had the Austro-Hungarians been victorious, that the world after WWI would have been better off. Impossible to prove, but fun to think about. I envision that world as being more steam-punk oriented, somehow.
Well the Republican house leader from Pennsylvania can help you out there:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o32tF-S6K60
Even the Republican House Leader admits the law was intended to let Mitt Romney win Pen State.
They made a list of specific forms of ID that are valid and ones that are not. That list gives a heavily weighted bias to Republicans. So 15 million people need a new government ID in Republican states, those people are mostly Democrat and unaligned voters. They'll have to get this Id from governments under GOP control that haven't invested in the capacity to issue all of those IDs until after the elections.
That's enough to probably win Pen State for Mitt Romney. They know it, that's what it was intended to do. Yet the claim is of 'buses' moving fake voters from state to state. When they've investigated that claim, it's been found to be completely bogus. Misregistrations being so far below statistical significance as to be one of the more ludicrous claim Fox has made.
I'm certainly not going to argue that there wasn't any abuse, only that in at least some of the cases he was justified. And, to be honest, I don't know what percentage of the cases were questionable.
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If you truly believe that the citizens are incapable of electing not-terrible leaders (or, for that matter, weighing evidence fairly when seated on a jury), then what you're really advocating is some form of dictatorship.
No, you are not. People are definitely free to make an argument for dictatorships if they so choose, but fearing some of the drawbacks of democracy doesn't require you to advocate a dictatorship. Polybius argued that all of the "basic" forms of government were flawed (rule by one, rule by few, rule by many), and that a government that consists of multiple bodies using all of the basic forms of government would be superior to one of the most basic government. The idea was that all of these different institutions would have their own powers and keep the other institutions in check. He also saw as an example of this (consuls, the senate, popular assemblies).
If you fast forward to the enlightenment, the somewhat related idea of "separation of powers" was developed. The idea here was (again) to have multiple institutions (typically along the lines of executive, legislative, and judicial branches) that each have their own set of powers, where in theory some of those powers are designed to keep the other branches in check. The United States is a pretty good example there (not too surprising as the concepts are related and the people who developed the US constitution mostly had classical educations and modeled the constitution on the Roman Republic to an extent).
The thought behind both of these concepts is that because there are multiple institutions all battling for power, the system won't degrade into a bad, abusive system as quickly as one of the pure forms. Like all forms of government, there are downsides. A big one (that we see in the US today) is gridlock. It can be difficult to get anything done, and that's partially by design (its more difficult to abuse one's power if its more difficult to use it), but there can be pretty serious consequences to that. For example, the budget disaster going on in the US right now.
You must be new to politics. Fixing non-existent problems they can't prove exist is a dead give away. duh!
The complex rules and regulations on voting coming from the proponents of Voter IDs are where the true motives become clear-- the devil is in the details. Never trust a politician's summarization. Do you trust marketing claims? Probably, they hire marketing firms to sell you both.
How about this: You have a great popular video game; everybody wants it, but it includes a Sony-like DRM rootkit backdoor into your computer. Some people will install the game and weaken their systems while others will find out about the details and oppose it.
The sole purpose as their moves show is to PREVENT LEGIT VOTERS. It won't outlaw minorities voting, that would be illegal and unpopular-- but it can make sure it is extra difficult and harass demographics that typically vote against them. This is easy for the GOP to do as there are so many minority groups who are against them they can single them out easily. The DFL would as well except they lack such easy to spot targets that do not overlap into their supporters.
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Um, just exactly how much statistical analysis is necessary to declare this fraud?
So basically, if it's like a typical Florida election but Democrats win, it's fraud?
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The short form answer is "The Civil War", Lincoln can be considered justified by that view if you accept the argument that "The Constitution is not a suicide pact.", or his actions can be seen as going beyond what was actually necessary to prosecute the war. I've read good arguments either way.
The long answer won't fit here, and I'm not sure it exists. I've taught Root Causes of the Civil War in military OCS classes. I tend to favor an argument that Lincolns actions had more necessity behind them than is generally recognized, but I'd have to base this claim on an analogy with US use of nuclear weapons at the end of WW2, an area subject to similar debate. Reading what some highly placed persons in the Confederate government and the Imperial Japanese government of their respective times wrote makes me of the opinion that both situations were at least partially justified from a purely mathematical analysis of the stated goals, intentions and claims of these government officials, and if anything, Lincoln pushed it less far that Truman. I could also make the same point by comparing non-governmental writers who held positions we might call political pundits, journalists, and such in the two eras. No analogy is perfect, one derived like this is doubly suspect, and a detailed study of just how a single Confederate cabinet post in 1862 matches to Hirohito's closest equivalent advisor in 1942, for example, would probably be a year's research.
I doubt Lincoln's example is that relevant to the current actions of the US. The issue of a declared war with mostly clearly defined goals vrs. a situation where no one seems to have clear victory conditions in mind is one reason not to rely too much on any claim that the US government today is following Lincoln's example.
Who is John Cabal?
Exit polling is highly effective as it was being done for decades and still is in many places to detect problems; some even call elections from it and just use the paper as a kind of verification process.
But in the USA, exit polling was smeared so bad and the public so ignorant it was outlawed in no time without much resistance. There is no reason they made such a huge and unjustified move other than current or future corruption plans. I think large enough fraud schemes were at risk of exposure and that is why it was killed.
Any new system that WORKED would threaten corruption and naturally the corrupt would strongly oppose it. Just like real news that keeps citizens properly informed gets whistle blower heroes persecuted and wikileaks...
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With electronic voting, anyone who actually thinks they are voting is fooling themselves. Its all a scam. The money people control who gets elected. They make a big deal out of it as a subterfuge for what is really going on. The guy who gets "elected" is the guy they wanted in office anyhow. Rep and Dem is two sides OF THE SAME COIN. They take turns being the bad guy like some good cop/bad cop routine. It gives the appearance to the public they are actually doing something. We haven't had a real election in a very long time. Its all a bad joke and the joke is on us. How do you think MASSIVE scale corruption continues in DC? luck? Sorry, welcome to reality 101. I wish it wasn't I really do, but unfortunately it is. Maybe someday we will actually be able to vote and have it matter. But only when money baggers are not allowed to corrupt them all.
I'm old, not dead. Well that's my 2 cents worth, your mileage may vary. I say what I think, not what you want to hear.
The sole purpose as their moves show is to PREVENT LEGIT VOTERS.
Oh, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
Fixing non-existent problems
The simple fact of the matter is that we have no idea how bad voter fraud is inside the US. We have no idea because we make no efforts to check for it. However, we do know that the Democratic Party has been using some pretty shady tactics to "register" voters and we do know that there have been some pretty suspicious votes. If Obama manages to win this year with the economy in the state it's in, we'll know we have a voter fraud problem. (Non-skewed polls and economic voting models both point to a Romney landslide.)
Voter ID is, at the very least, trying to solve a problem where we don't know that the people voting are the people who actually registered to vote. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't, the fact is we don't know. Voter ID aims to fix that.
It has nothing to do with voter suppression and everything to do with preventing voter fraud - something we currently have no way of even knowing how large a problem it truly is. It's only "nonexistent" in that we make no effort to try and prevent it.
So fraudsters will apply the same algorithm to make their fraud plausible. Yeah, very useful, indeed.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Disclaimer: I haven't read TFA - my PDF-reader locks up on this document for some reason.
There is one kind of fraud that can never be detected by any means, and that it to alter each vote as they are placed, i.e. identical in every way to the voter having cast his vote elsewhere. Electronic voting machines are perfect for this. A similar technique would be to point a gun at some of the voters head and make them vote a certain way.
"Suffing the ballot boxes" - reminds me of that Blackadder episode with the "rotten borough" with just one voter: Baldrick of course. When he has cast his vote the result is announced: A completely new candidate wins with over 1.000 write-in votes, and one invalid vote (Baldricks obviously) is disregarded. That was clearly a perfectly fine election with no statistical anormalies.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
With the advent of other uses of the bitcoin style block chain validation such as NameCoin, which can be piggy backed onto the bitcoin network, I always thought it would make a perfect open validation system for voting. Each district or machine has a hash id that is registered , each voters vote is validated on the bitcoin network and the person is given the block id, and knows his districts hash id, you can then verify your vote counted as you actually voted for, but with anonymity. No worries of tampering with the software, as the client is bound to the bitcoin network verification.
John Adam? Never heard of him.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
For whatever the "intended purpose", attempts at gerrymandering can backfire. The more extreme the attempted gerrymander, the more disastrous the outcome can be (at least, in a fair election). The result can even be Tullymandering.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
cities such as Philadelphia that has more voters than the US Census says it has total residents.
Even if fraud was proved, nothing would happen. The GOP-controlled Senate committee tasked with investigating the lies that justified the Iraq War moved to table it until after the election so as to not make it a political football. After the election, miserable excuse for a human Senator Pat Roberts announced they would not be investigating as the past is the past and why bother. And so it goes.
If the election fraud campaign is successful, you really think the victors are going to investigate how they themselves stole the election? Polly Anna
4. More and more voting stations are located in suburban areas or on the edge of town to make sure only the well-off can easily get there and to cut down on the riff-raff (the poor, the elderly, the minorites working long slave-wage hours, etc.).
Coda: In Kansas, they decided in an election year - pure coincidence, I'm sure - to finally revamp the computer system for drivers licenses (and state IDs which aren't free) after years and years of delay. My first license renewal was 'lost in the mail' and only recently just received the replacement. I fully expect there will be tens of thousands - maybe even me - that will turned away from the polls because some minor thing is wrong with the new license or ID. The main thing being wrong will be skin color or party affiliation. And as usual in US politics, jack shit will be done about it.
Anarcho-capitalism very quickly turns into mini-dictatorships of people with the most cash or most effective military force. For example, in colonial Virginia, plantation owners ran their plantations not significantly different from a feudal manor, acting as absolute ruler over slaves and indentured servants under their control and behaving very much like the nobility of Europe. Or to pick something more modern, in northern Mexico, with the government basically ineffective, the leaders of the drug cartels rule over their territory and personnel with an iron fist.
Minarchism means you have a government, and some body has to be in charge of managing the courts and the police and the army (otherwise, you just have anarchy, with all the drawbacks described in the previous paragraph). You have to pick that body somehow: If you hold an election, it's subject to all the democratic whims you're worried about. And if you don't include some variety of the governed consenting with the actions of the government, then you have an unaccountable person or group of people that will effectively operate as a dictatorship. (This one has to be theoretical, as there's no instance of anyone anywhere being able to create and keep a minarchist government for any significant length of time.)
"Libertarian socialism" is an oxymoron, since the fundamental belief of libertarianism is that the government should not force you to do things with your property that you don't want to do, while the fundamental belief of socialism is that the government should force the rich to use their property to support the poor.
Constitutional monarchy depends on whether the monarch has any real power. If the monarch has no real power (e.g. UK and Denmark), then it's a democracy really, and the views of the (theoretically more enlightened) monarch has no effect on policy, and thus all the problems you describe with democracy kick in. If the monarch has a real say in the functioning of government, then typically the monarch acts as an absolute ruler and any other political body serves to advise and carry out the wishes of the monarch.
I am officially gone from
For example, there is very strong evidence that Scott Brown reached the US Senate as a result of election fraud. Details are in http://electiondefensealliance.org/files/BelieveIt_OrNot_100904.pdf That analysis compared the results in machine count jurisdictions and hand count jurisdictions. The usual disparity between hand count and machine count results (based on prior elections) runs around 0.25%. Coakley led in hand count jurisdictions by 2% and Brown in machine count jurisdictions by 5%. That is a 7% disparity. It also turns out that the company operating the machine counts was Republican-connected, and that the ballots were neither saved nor sampled to validate the accuracy of the machine counts. There are numerous ways to tamper with a machine count of paper ballots, especially in a two-person special election.
The method published in the subject paper could not pick up this kind of election fraud.
Constitutional monarchy can look like a strong executive - NOT legislative - office carrying out the function of seeing the law as written implemented correctly, and acting in the interest of national security in case of invasion. I am somewhat strongly sympathetic to seeing it tried out again. Call me crazy...but one of the Indian guys I worked with pointed out that under the maharaja, only one guy needed to be bribed.
For instance, we can prepare a law according to which, if the result of a vote are cheated by more than 10% according to fraud parameter fi from the paper, then this vote is canceled.
And this even could have precise granularity, like the vote is canceled only in the regions where this cheating is detected.
And we also can add, we ban the citizens that handled the vote bureau, not from voting again, but from being bureau delegates for 10 years.
Of course it is useful.
Speaking of which, I'm now waiting for an application worksheet to test my own election here, for which I have all the regional data in a newspaper I kept.
Herve S.
Why waste all this time on silly things like statistics and facts? According to our own little "darling" Kris Kobach here in Kansas, voter fraud is horribly rampant everywhere, billions of votes are fraudulent, and anyone disagreeing with him is wrong.
The problem with this type of analysis is that it is guaranteed to very rarely 'catch' innocent people.
So while it can be used to help isolate good targets to investigate it cannot be used as proof of any crime.
For instance, the likelihood of a person winning the lottery twice in their lifetime is astronomical.
However, the likelihood that some person somewhere out of all the lottery winners from all the large lotteries worldwide will win it
twice is there lifetimes is highly likely. ( if given enough winners and lotteries it is in fact all but guaranteed to happen).
So these kind of tools can file 'likely' criminals, but cannot replace hard evidence. worse they can cause discontent and
even rebellion ( in some areas) if there is no further proof of fraud that action can be taken on.
It is an oxymoron, it's an impossible situation. You can come up with all sorts of mental contortions but you can't change the fact. Either the society is libertarian (liberal in the classical sense) or it is not.
A libertarian society cannot have 'communal property', because this demands central planning of some type and this goes directly against the principle of self-determination, it denies the free market. Even if you set it up, within months it will destabilise, people will not agree on things like who and how much is supposed to 'sacrifice' to maintain such a weird concept as 'communal property' within actual free market.
You see, even without the free market but with central planning and with lack of actual due process, lack of real laws, the way things are running today, the system has so called 'common property' but it doesn't actually belong to anybody and thus it's not just neglected, it's abused for the benefit of the special interests, that can buy the politicians who control access to it. The society ends up backing that deal.
So before BP drills in the deep waters, the government sets liability caps of 75 Million USD, which are ridiculously low, given the possible liability lawsuits that can arise from a spill or any other type of disaster. How is it possible to have 'common property' when in fact nobody is the owner of it and nobody actually cares about what happens to it and thus politicians simply sell access to it to the highest bidders, who then use it for whatever and the costs of misuse are dropped upon the tax payers?
You think a libertarian society would not know what this concept you speak of would mean for them? It would mean the beginning of the end of the free market in that system, which is actually the way USA free market ended.
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The trolls keep trolling. You are a troll and all others in this thread are a troll and you are replying to a troll, you are all trolls.
The opinion method seems to be much more robust against statistical attack. What's the opinion method? It's clearly demonstrated in the US Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v96Y8r2UPic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ_ylYNbAlY
P.S. Detecting fraud is easy enough. Making a difference is much more difficult.
Constitutional monarchy can look like a strong executive - NOT legislative - office carrying out the function of seeing the law as written implemented correctly, and acting in the interest of national security in case of invasion.
If the monarch has the guns, the monarch is ultimately the one who decides what power the legislative body has and can ignore the laws whenever he pleases. If the legislative body has the guns, then they decide what power the monarch has, if any.
I am officially gone from
You can come up with all sorts of mental contortions but you can't change the fact.
It doesn't take a mental contortion, only a bit of understanding of English.
See, English allows for at least two different interpretations of the phrase "libertarian socialism"
Your reading is a libertarian society with some socialism thrown in
But you can also read it as a socialist society with some libertarianism thrown in.
A libertarian society of course has problems with "communal property", lack of free markets, government telling you what to do, etc.
But a socialist society has no problems with any of those. This society becomes "libertarian socialism" when the society selectively makes (many) parts of it more free.
You think a libertarian society would not know what this concept you speak of would mean for them? It would mean the beginning of the end of the free market in that system, which is actually the way USA free market ended.
Well, you can blame Ford, who instead of following the free market and pay his workers the same as everyone else, and let the turnover sort itself out, he went and paid his workers twice the free market price. He also treated his workers very well with shorter work days. Ford set the precedent in having rich guys paying for the welfare of the poor guys
Ford complained about turnover, well maybe that's because the market isn't ready for cars. Ford then distorted the market and (along with other car manufacturers) bought government power, and turned US away from rail to highways.
If the monarch has the guns, the monarch is ultimately the one who decides what power the legislative body has and can ignore the laws whenever he pleases. If the legislative body has the guns, then they decide what power the monarch has, if any.
Try telling that to the people of Iraq and see how far you get. They have plenty of guns...
Hint: US is the Monarch in this case.
You can't prove your position; you are the people making the claim so the burden is upon you to prove your claim.
Shady tactics is not indication of wrong doing; smoke does not mean there is a fire. learn some logic.
There are not enough dead people on the voter roles to make much of a difference so that one is out even if they got 100% of them.
I've remembered the stories of GOP politicians getting into office promising to fix the problems and investigating wasting a ton of taxpayer money looking for problems that are not there. They have investigated and each time they come up with squat; it is beating a dead horse at this point they just hype "the problem" because in practice they got jack so even the GOP doesn't bother to investigate their claims anymore! Their solutions are all about creating new poll taxes and new poll exams with the age-old purposes of attacking demographics they view as the enemy. If they valued democracy they would change to appeal to the majority and work to get a majority to vote (since most people don't) instead of discouraging all voting except to a minority who agrees with them (because even a majority of voters is still a minority the way things are.)
VoterID does not aim to fix the problem which does not exist in MOST states. That is the whole point, some GOP members are honest enough to know the real intent while others are too honest so they just lie to themselves and drink the cool aid.
We have same-day instant registration; if the person is found out not only do they get jailed (and we have a few every time) but the person who vouched for them ALSO goes to jail. In contested races these records are gone over in more detail-- even then we still arrest a few every time trying to cheat. They end up following up on questionable registrations every year, the burden is shifted to the person vouching for them. We could get better-- by taking photos of registering voters for example. I knew an immigrant who was trying to illegally vote and asked me; I said no-- afterwards I asked him if he was able to vote-- he said he couldn't get anybody to vouch for him. Most people will not break the law and risk it especially when your identity is totally confirmed so you end up in jail even if the other person is never found.
Cheating here would take thousands of people conspiring in an organized large conspiracy without any leaks, mistakes, or plea bargains. You do realize that registering 1000s of fake people would STILL require those fake people to have to go vote 1000s of times right? In my polling place, we'd easily notice somebody coming back 3-4 times. maybe even the 2nd time. They'd have to travel around all day to spread their fake identities around - so you are still talking a large number of people working in a fairly large conspiracy. Then you have the fact that many registered voters DO NOT VOTE even if you got them registered.
The GOP gets more legit voters thrown off roles or stuck in provisional ballots (even election judges have been victimized) than any hint of DFL ghost voters. We lose over a million legit voters each election cycle due to the GOP games and these are all confirmed rock-solid cases. The DFL on the other hand only has your unsubstantiated claims against them which are never proven. To say the two sides balance out is intellectually dishonest. To say that either side won't cheat if they can get away with it is just naive. I'm sure the DFL tries what it can, but it can't do the kind of shit the GOP does nor is it organized. I've volunteered for both and the DFL is the biggest mess I've ever seen, I wonder how they elect anybody; if they tried what the GOP does they'd fuck it up so bad and we'd all know about it.