Slashdot Mirror
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?
Your post is proof that you did not even look at the first figure from TFA. The irregularities are very clear in all of the figures.
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.
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.
His buddies must have included the entire Minnesota Supreme Court, since it was their unanimous decision that rejected his opponent's appeal. But don't let facts stop you from your right-wing conspiracy theories.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
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.
So what? A technique doesn't have to be 100% accurate to be useful. Which is fortunate, because few techniques are.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It was a violation of "equal protection under the law" because different ballots were treated differently by different voting districts. Just so happened that disqualified ballots from liberal districts were treated a lot more leniently than disqualified ballots from conservative districts.
This is all well documented. The Minnesota Supreme Court refused to intervene because they were using a high malice standard.
That doesn't make what happened right, and I highly doubt that a fair recount would have resulted in the election of Franken.
So what? A technique doesn't have to be 100% accurate to be useful. Which is fortunate, because few techniques are.
How is this useful?
Interesting perhaps, but not useful. The party that WON using any detectible vote fraud will not let you change anything, certainly not the outcome and probably not even vote methodology, or credential checking in future elections. In fact they probably won't give you access to voting detail numbers at all once it becomes common knowledge that such analysis is possible.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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?
Aside: Personally, I think the photo ID thing is a fine thing
I don't:
1. It's solving a problem that doesn't exist. The folks that have been pushing photo ID have been able to come up with approximately 10 cases of somebody pretending to be somebody else and casting a vote at the polls, having a significant impact on a grand total of 0 elections. If you want to cast fraudulent ballots, it's far easier to do so using absentee ballots.
2. If you require would-be voters to pay for their IDs, then this is a poll tax, which was ruled unconstitutional decades ago. If you don't, then this is an unnecessary (see point 1) expense, both for the government budget (and ultimately the people who pay taxes) and for the individuals who have to go get a free photo ID (which is only free if you don't count the transportation to the place to get it and the time to wait for it).
3. The party that pushed through these bills stated quite explicitly their purpose, namely to prevent people likely to vote for the other major party from voting. To quote a state government representative, "Voter ID, which is gonna allow ______________ to win the state of Pennsylvania, done". (I'm leaving the party name blank here to protect the guilty). Acts of these sorts are an anathema to democratic governance.
I am officially gone from
Didn't even read TFSummary.
Statistics isn't about being 100%. That's the whole point of trends and probabilities. If there's around 65% voter turnout in an area, within a certain deviation, and one polling station has an 80% voter turnout, that's an anomaly. Usually anything more than 2 standard deviations out is an anomaly, statistically speaking. Nothing implies this is 100% election fraud, or even election fraud at all. It just means something different is happening there.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
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.
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.
Very simple.
The purpose of an election is to determine will of the majority (or at least plurality) of the voting public.
If Alice and Bob are running against each other, and an illegal immigrant casts a ballot for Alice, then the election is biased 1 vote towards her.
But in the same scenario, if one person who was planning to vote for Bob gives up due to long lines, then the election is also biased by 1 vote towards Alice.
The two situations have roughly the same impact, and there's no rational reason to worry about one over the other. So, if you want voter ID laws, you must prove that the number of false ballots that such laws stop exceeds the number of valid ballots that are also stopped.
So where is your evidence of widespread voter fraud? You don't have any, because it doesn't even make sense to commit that style of fraud. If you wanted to steal an election, you would bribe a few dozen people to stuff ballot boxes, not a few hundred thousand to cast false ballots. There's simply no way a conspiracy of such tremendous size could be kept secret.
1) Think about this for a second. If you want to commit a felony, would you rather commit the felony in person where you can be caught, or would you rather commit it anonymously via absentee ballot?
For example, the special election of Bill Stinson in 1993 in PA was overturned because the election was stolen...with absentee ballots.
2a) You know that "free" ID you were supposed to get? Take PA, where the law was passed in the past seven months (March 2012). That "free" photo ID did not exist until late August! Up until then, they were requiring everyone to get the standard photo ID - the one that costs money and requires a higher burden of proof. Imagine your surprise when you go to PennDOT and try to get your "free" photo ID, after you manage to get a ride there (did you know that something like six counties in PA have no PennDOT facility, and another 13-ish counties have one facility open one day a week?)...only to discover that you actually do need to pay for your ID.
2b) What you need an ID for in modern society is a red herring when it comes to voting. Almost 20% of the registered voters in Philadelphia do not have a state-issued ID! Regardless of this fact, how do you define a "significant" amount of people without ID? If this law ends up preventing more legitimate votes than preventing fraudulent votes, is that significant enough for you?
3) I think you're mistaken when you think "no one" is trying to prevent real people from voting. You know that firm that the Republicans are disowning lately, Strategic Allied Consulting? The owner back in 2004 was caught throwing away registrations from voters who registered Democrat. The GOP knows that in-person voter ID is practically nonexistent, and that elections are really stolen with absentee ballots or just by manipulating the voting machines, like these eight people in Clay County, Kentucky, including a judge.
Voter fraud is real, but in-person voter fraud is very rare (see 1 for why). So if the GOP is really interested in honest elections, why are they focusing on the rarest form of fraud? None of these ID laws would stop any of the documented instances of voter fraud that I have mentioned in this post - at least one of which resulted in an actual stolen election.
:(){
You're not making sense. Polls have nowhere near the precision required to predict the outcome of a senate race within a few hundred votes. Furthermore, you are positing that dozens of election officials all conspired to commit a fraud against the American people, which is a far cry from a few casino execs getting their customers to spend more money.
On top of that, if the Democrats have the means to cheat close elections, why only that one? There are plenty of close elections that they've lost.
You believe in this big evil liberal conspiracy because, at the time, you were upset and latched on to the first alternate theory presented, and now you're too invested in it to see reason.
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.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
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?
Interesting perhaps, but not useful. The party that WON using any detectible vote fraud will not let you change anything, certainly not the outcome and probably not even vote methodology, or credential checking in future elections. In fact they probably won't give you access to voting detail numbers at all once it becomes common knowledge that such analysis is possible.
Just because a party won by fraud, it doesn't mean they become dictators for life and can block every attempt to fix the system. Sooner or later another party will win, and the cheating party can't make their manipulations too obvious.
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) --
Tell that to Steven Harper!
Because every time you mention Democrats or Republicans in a thread like this, it tends to deteriorate into an argument about which party cheats the most, drawing attention away from the real issue being discussed.
The problem there is, if anyone can just walk in to the poll and say, "I'm Steve Wozniak", and we never ask for any proof that they are who they say they are, how do you prove they aren't Steve Wozniak 3 days later?
Why don't you try that and see how far you get. But you'd better do enough research to find a registered voter in the precinct you'll be voting in who isn't likely to be voting otherwise. I'll bet if you tried real hard you could cast 10 or 15 votes that way as long as you don't get caught.
In my state I have to sign my name when I vote and that signature gets compared to the signature on my voter registration. That's plenty of ID for me.
In the USA, the state declares fraud on YOU.
You know sometimes these things do happen. Having done work with state and local government, I see things like this happening all the time.
Government employment culture is the idea on what you do wrong will hurt you, vs what you do right will promote you.
So there is little effort in telling people how to do things right, and if some one makes a mistake they will keep quiet and hope they don't get caught.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Does getting the ID require that a person provide any documents that they must pay for? How hard is it for poor people to get those for free, and how much extra work do they need to do to prove they're poor enough to qualify for the free ID or ancillary documentation? Does it require that they go to a particular place during working hours to obtain it and if so does it compensate poor people for their time and travel expenses, as well as contact their employer to ensure that they are not penalized for taking that time? Does it require that they actually have a home address/proof of address in order to obtain one, and if so, how are homeless people handled? How are voters informed of the need for an ID in order to vote, and does it take into account language issues, homelessness issues, and any other obstacle to being informed that disproportionately affects poor people and minorities?
Those are very, very real problems for people who are already on the margins, and those issues act as a massive disincentive for those people to get an ID and the people behind those laws know it.
For you and me, getting an ID is nothing more than hopping in the car, going to the DMV, paying pocket change to get the ID and then being on our merry way. Our employers won't fire us for needing a couple of hours to run that errand. For someone who is on the margin, though, it can be a goddamn epic adventure through bureaucracy that ultimately is confusing, frustrating and ultimately may end in failure and come at a cost far higher than you are aware of.
I do research with participants who are below the poverty line, and believe me, the hoops my participants have to jump through and the extra effort they have to go through to even get to the point where they can jump through those hoops is staggering.
Further, the problem that voter IDs are intended to prevent is not, in fact, a problem: retail voter fraud of the sort IDs would theoretically address is pretty much nonexistent, and is completely dwarfed by wholesale vote manipulation that is either intentional or accidental.
Finally, many voter ID laws allow some forms of ID but not others, and the allowed types of IDs in those states overwhelmingly are owned by people who tend to vote more conservatively, while the disallowed ones tend to belong to people who would skew more towards the liberal demographic.
It's a bullshit issue, it costs way more money to implement than the "problem" it solves costs society and it is intended to limit turnout of those people who most need representation in our society. Anyone who is a fan of voter ID laws is, to be charitable, misinformed at best and actively seeking to disenfranchise others at worst, and they are encouraging costly government intervention where none is needed.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
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.
Signs of this are races that turn out to be very close within 1/2 percent as they stuff just enough to tip the result. Seen an excess of extreme close races lately? The probability of a high percentage of very close races is slim. Seeing many very close races under 1% spread is a statistical indication of rigged elections.
Funny, I take close races more like a sign that people are holding their nose and voting for the lesser of two evils. I mean, you can vote Republican for fiscal conservatism and denying civil rights, or you can vote Democratic for permissive society and economic ruin.
In the end, they're just promises anyway, both sides bring economic ruin and denial of rights, the details are who specifically won't be able to afford anything and which rights get trampled.
People are so scared that the "other side" can win that they can't bring themselves to vote for a 3rd party candidate they really like and who might actually do what they promise, hence the cycle perpetuates.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Have you ever been to Philadelphia? Having a car isn't necessarily a luxury, it's a liability when you have nowhere to park it. If you have no car, and you don't smoke, you have no need for a driver's license. Or maybe you're married and you have no license because your husband does all the driving and buys all the cigarettes and booze.
And I'm not saying that in-person fraud is exactly zero, or that the poll workers will notice. What I'm saying is that there is a much higher risk of being caught committing a felony in person than committing that same felony by absentee ballots or manipulating the voting machines.
Notice how I also provided evidence supporting my assertions that voter fraud does exist, and notice that voter ID laws do absolutely nothing to stop the documented instances of voter fraud. I'm supposed to just trust you that in-person voter fraud is rampant based entirely on hypotheticals, while you just ignore all the other real instances of voter fraud that these laws can't stop?
Also, why would the PA GOP push so hard for voter ID that includes an expiration date? I mean, if you are who you say you are, it doesn't matter if your ID has expired or not...unless you were intentionally trying to prevent students from using their college IDs, because such IDs often do not have expiration dates.
:(){