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Forget the Russians: Corrupt, Local Officials Are the Biggest Threat To Elections (securityledger.com)
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.
REALLY?
And they don't even think of gerrymandering at this level.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
"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.
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.
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...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
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.
Less eyes on rural politics, more ability to get away with bullshit.
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.
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 entire process?
Our new president has made a major effort to find election irregularities and so far has come up empty.
...omphaloskepsis often...
The 2000 presidential election shined a harsh spotlight on this in Florida.
Yeah, watching the Supreme Court of Florida change the law on the fly in order to allow Al Gore to lawyer his way into the White House showed just how "fuck the law, we'll do anything to win" Democrats are.
It was so bad, every single US Supreme Court justice called the actions of the Democrat-dominated Florida Supreme Court completely improper. (YES THEY FUCKING DID. READ THE DECISIONS - the differences were merely in the proper remedies - 5 US Supreme Court justices were for immediately bitch-slapping the Florida Supreme Court, two were for letting the Florida legislature use its plenary power to bitch slap the Florida Supreme Court, and two were "Eh, not quite yet for the bitch slap")
The "firehouse", huh? You illiterate tick.
I blame autocorrect. I'm also 20 mikes away from my skinny vanilla latte for this morning.
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.
Oh I don't know. I think parts of the country are fairly far along in that regard. Take the 11 California counties which have more registered voters than citizens eligible to vote: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...
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...
Only the dumbest of liberal voters didn't already know this.
That's true. On the other hand, even the smartest conservative voters are clueless about this issue.
Surely the Slashdot editors wouldn't publish this piece of drivel? Must be a slow news day...
Why do you consider it drivel?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
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. Right now it is so disconnected with different structures and voting booths, etc it would be practically impossible to do coordinated fraud. We have local city, county and state governments for reasons and there are reasons to not have 100% central control of government. An analogy might be the school system. Do we want or require the federal government actually run all the schools in the country? Likely not, but they might be able to help do some oversight and help without actually taking full control. Side observation is that people (parents) seem a lot more motivated to make sure *their* child is being educated well than the average person is involved with voting and local government.
IMHO, the current POTUS doesn't have the proper respect for data and nuance of collecting all the voting data from across the country to be the right person to do the job. The initial missteps of the voter suppression commission he created seems more about throwing something together quickly than really doing a good long term job. It seems like they are going to throw a lot of data together than should be carefully handled and might take years to properly merge. The commission will end up with lots of dups and anomalies which will be taken as evidence of the fraud and abuse they want to find and used to justify a bunch of voter suppression laws.
I doubt that this used to be any different last year.
bickerdyke
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 Used car salesmen may run for mayor because he is the most prominent person there, but perhaps not the most ethical.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
And most of the conservatives don't realize they are the victims of it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Describe these "technical issues" in more detail. Be very specific.
Things like not having any ID at all, or presenting ID with incorrect name/address information, or presenting ID that has expired, or presenting ID with somebody else's photo on it, or presenting out-of-date ID, or presenting ID that isn't among the accepted types are "technical issues" that absolutely should prevent somebody from voting.
In an electoral system where one person is entitled to one vote, it's essential to make it as difficult as possible for people to vote more than once. The very integrity of the election itself depends on this. Checking for ID is a very reasonable way of doing so.
What's unreasonable about this? If somebody has just presented questionable, or even no, identification, the electoral officials shouldn't be going out of their way to allow such people to vote.
It's also very reasonable to expect the voters to know and understand the electoral process they're engaging in.
You seem to want to make this a matter of race, but you neglect to consider that these people could very well just have been better prepared. Of course people who have the proper ID to begin with will have an easier time voting.
How were you behaving? Were you making a loud public disturbance that was in fact interfering with the electoral process? If so, it's very reasonable for them to have removed you.
Based on what you describe, it sounds like nothing more than a case of some voters being totally unprepared and totally ignorant about the electoral process they wish to participate in. It's not the fault of "whites" or "Republicans" or "corruption" if there are certain other people who aren't willing to properly prepare for voting. So you got angry at the responsible people, instead of the irresponsible ones, and you were removed from the voting premises for being a disturbance. And now you pretend to be a victim.
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.
Was this submitted by Trump himself?
AC comments get piped to
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.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
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 bottleneck. These processes typically take much longer than the time it takes to actually complete and submit a ballot.
This becomes clear when you look at where the lines are. The lines to use the voting booths are small, if there even are any. It's the lines at the check-in desks that are the longest. Why is that? Because the check-in booths are the bottleneck!
Go look at the video footage and photographs from American elections if you don't believe me.
Like we determined earlier, it's the check-in process that's the bottleneck.
If the people in one area tend to come well-prepared, with proper and valid ID, and they're voting at the right place, then of course their lines will move quicker. They won't spend as much time at the check-in station, and they won't block other people from checking in. Collectively, they're able to vote much quicker.
On the other hand, if the people in another area tend to come ill-prepared, without proper and valid ID, then of course their lines will move slower. When they're fumbling to find their ID, or arguing when told their obviously-invalid ID is invalid, or filling out affidavits or registration paperwork, or trying to vote in the wrong district, or otherwise taking a long time at what should be a simple process, of course there will be delays.
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.
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.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
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.
LBJ during his political ascent in Texas has long been suspected of violating the integrity of the 1948 Senate election.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-57xl...
Robert Caro writes about this extensively.
I heard more than one *whoosh* a moment ago... Wha happen?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
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.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
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.
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 - you are absolutely correct that 25 people can turn an election out here. However, rural folk tend to be a lot more independent, and far less likely to be cowed into not voting. You should attend a school board and/or RFPD meeting sometime - we're *loud* and *proud* about our opinions, right or wrong. Given the secrecy of votes and the fact that all of our votes are mailed to the County Seat to be counted (welcome to Oregon), nobody in our little town has a clue as to who actually voted, and/or for what and whom they voted. You can infer it on rare occasion (e.g. Joe Candidate only got six votes, and he has five close adult relatives and a spouse), but you'll never know for sure.
Rural politics is a lot more personal than the city. No anonymity here - you can meet and talk with the candidate(s), and the candidate(s) spend most of their politicking face-to-face or through mailers. You won't see them in a televised debate (because it's hard to watch the local cable public access channel when everyone has satellite), TV ads are prohibitively expensive, and rarely will you hear 'em on the radio (unless there's a local AM station.) Winning the attention game (as you aptly put it) means the candidate (and every surrogate he has) often goes plodding from door-to-door, usually making his case in person, or at any local gathering (churches, the local Elks meeting, whatever). The local grapevines are also a very common means of spreading word about positions, ideology, etc (but you run the risk of playing the 'telephone game', as usual.) It's a far cry from the slick TV commercials and local TV news coverage/debates/etc that the city candidates get.
Oh, and one other thing - if the candidate is a bastard, everyone will know it long before he announces his candidacy. Half the town near my home knows me on a first-name basis, knows what I do for a living, knows my wife, knows which church I go to, has a very good idea of my income, my politics, etc etc. I also know who the prominent folks are, know which ones are worthless, and so does everyone else. This tends to keep the stereotypical 'local tinpot tyrants' at bay.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The 2000 presidential election shined a harsh spotlight on this in Florida.
Yeah, watching the Supreme Court of Florida change the law on the fly in order to allow Al Gore to lawyer his way into the White House showed just how "fuck the law, we'll do anything to win" Democrats are.
It was so bad, every single US Supreme Court justice called the actions of the Democrat-dominated Florida Supreme Court completely improper. (YES THEY FUCKING DID. READ THE DECISIONS)
No, they didn't. From Justice Steven's dissenting opinion (Joined by Justices Ginsburg and Breyer):
The legislative power in Florida is subject to judicial review pursuant to Article V of the Florida Constitution, and nothing in Article II of the Federal Constitution frees the state legislature from the constraints in the state constitution that created it. Moreover, the Florida Legislature’s own decision to employ a unitary code for all elections indicates that it intended the Florida Supreme Court to play the same role in Presidential elections that it has historically played in resolving electoral disputes. The Florida Supreme Court’s exercise of appellate jurisdiction therefore was wholly consistent with, and indeed contemplated by, the grant of authority in Article II.
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.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
"my skinny vanilla latte"
Racist.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
You had them at "it'll boost tax revenues"
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
"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.
So you're blaming this on local government incompetence?
Hmm. Whatever the cause, the effect is the same.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
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 email servers.
Really. This is dumb.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
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".
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
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 recount. Had it been done Gore's way, Bush would have won. Had it been done Bush's way, Gore would have won.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Electronic-only ballots make keeping audit-able records nearly impossible. You can only audit what the computer recorded as the vote, not the voter's intent.
Having said that, computers can take photographs of the ballots and compute and publish hashes of a "concatenation" of all of the pictures it took in a given election PRIOR TO the ballot box being opened and the ballots being removed, as well as a hash of the vote totals.
This will make it much harder to tamper with an election after the fact without a high risk of the tampering being uncovered later.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I can understand the "more registered voters than citizens eligible to vote" issue, as I assume people don't magically fall off the registration when the move or die. Of course, we need to either vote (which keeps you registered) or re-register after some time, and a 44% surplus seems quite high... as does 99% voter turnout, so I'm not suggesting there's nothing fishy going on.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Citizens United is the biggest threat to US politics. Politicians' greed and corruption comes close second.
A friend of mine with a business in the desert southwest knew about my engineering background, and asked me to review some high-efficiency air conditioning units that were manufactured locally. The city was considering installing them in the city buildings, so she figured they might be good for her business as well. She sent me scans of the brochures and specs.
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 be thermodynamically operating as an air conditioner (heat pump). It was a spot-on match however for a swamp cooler (evaporative cooler). Except these units cost 10x more than a swamp cooler (they were priced high for air conditioners too). Curious if there was something else I was missing, I went to the manufacturer's company website to scour it for more technical info. I didn't find anything, but the homepage had a short blurb about the company's founder.
Next I went to the city website to see if I could find anything about the selection process for these air conditioner units. That's when I learned that the city mayor had the exact same unusual last name as the company's founder. Some further researched turned up that they were brothers. Mystery solved. Company manufactures swamp coolers, prices them at 10x the normal cost of a swamp cooler and markets them as high-efficiency air conditioners. Brother who is mayor convinces the city council to buy them "to support local businesses."
Oh I don't know. I think parts of the country are fairly far along in that regard. Take the 11 California counties which have more registered voters than citizens eligible to vote: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/... 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...
Yes, yes, rail at your pretended outrage. That story has been passed along the right-wing noise brigade quite a lot lately, no surprise that you are spreading the fires here. Guess it's a lot bettter when you can denounce California instead of other stateS.
But here's the thing, the state tallies do not support the claims of Judicial Watch.
Besides, it's not a crime for a person to have registered to vote in more than one place, and in today's mobile society, people like Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, and Tiffany Trump simply can't be expected to handle that kind of paperwork.
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?)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The article is perpetuating the whole Boss Hog / Hazard County narrative. While there are some shady dealings in some rural places, it's mostly easier to see as the eyes that are on it don't have as far to look or as many people to look at. Recently our county passed a 1% tax to build a new courthouse as ours is over 100 years old. Certain members of the county seat were trying to push a deal to buy the local golf course (for an outrageous sum) as the place to build said courthouse. Everyone saw through that crony deal and the courthouse isn't being built on the golf course.
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
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-government systems. Much of what they did was legal by the laws of the US, and the rest doesn't seem to rise to the level of deportable crime...even if you could name an individual.) I think that the election was really decided because nobody really liked Hillary, and some (to my mind stupid) people liked Trump.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
My son lost an election to an (IMHO) unqualified candidate who was backed by a local union here in Chicago. They spent more than $500,000 on a election where the total salary for the term was $160,000. Clearly they want influence on the budget and contract process. It is their money to spend and their right to free speech that defends their actions, even if it horrible public policy. There are no simple solutions.
Without common sense campaign finance rules, corruption is defined by the highest bidders.
Greed is the root of all evil.
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.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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 after death. Pro tip: you can't.
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 their favor. Win or lose, they have fun at our expense.
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.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I know right. It should only be CNN, Washington Post, Slate, and HuffPost allowed. Anything else is a bastion of the Alt-right and deplorables and therefore doesn't count.
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.
My experience is that the liberal cities (ie coastal California) are as herd mentality as they come. They have to be, anything else is a firing offense.
Citation:
http://www.npr.org/2017/08/08/...
We could always contact each individual who voted to affirm their decision.
Whether you are suggesting that is something we should do or something we could do if we wanted...no.
Your vote is anonymous. Always.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The reason so little seems to get done is because Trump has focused almost entirely on health care. The Republican leadership -- and the vast majority of the Republicans in Congress -- have in fact supported him. So your statement makes no sense.
If they wanted to "depose" Trump it is very simple. There are already multiple credible arguments for drawing up Articles of Impeachment, and maybe for acting under Amendment 25. If they did so, Trump would be gone. Do you see a SINGLE Republican even hinting at the possibility of this? You do not.
Public Service Announcement: Zerohedge will rot your brain.
Play Command HQ online
"Taking the guns of an elderly veteran because of a mistaken Social Security number is a tragedy also, and a crime."
That isn't corruption, it's a mistake.
"Denying a farmer the use of their land to establish a pond for irrigation and livestock is a crime and a tragedy."
Depending on the basis for the denial, that isn't corruption either.
Play Command HQ online
And Registration without deletion is quite normal, not leading to illegal votes.
Republicans voting absentee AND in person are the majority of convictions since 2008
And Registration without deletion is quite normal, not leading to illegal votes.
Republicans voting absentee AND in person are the majority of convictions,including Adams-apple Annthrax
And, in fact, nothing fishy is going on, with 11 states IN THE SOUTH also overregistered.
Yes, there IS a difference between Drudge and a reliable source.
While an interesting comment, my take away is this,
fact that all of our votes are mailed to the County Seat to be counted (welcome to Oregon), nobody in our little town has a clue as to who actually voted, and/or for what and whom they voted.
Doesn't matter about demographics and such if you can't witness the life of your vote from empty ballot box, through ballots being put in, to the public count at the end of the day. Dropping your ballot in a mail box (or even hand delivering it) to be counted at the leisure of the possibly corrupt means that you have no way of knowing if your vote was correctly counted along with your neighbours vote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I am a responsible citizen and removed myself from voting roles every single time I died!
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
The corruption is in encouraging government to overstep authority, mostly.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
As usual, Australia does it better. The Australian Electoral Commission is in charge of all federal elections, and there's state bodies bound by the same rules that run the state and local elections. Their funding isn't subject to any political process, and elected officials have no ability to manipulate electoral boundaries or the election process itself.
I might be the only one here who can call you a city slicker. ;-)
Six residences, unincorporated township, a half hour (or more, weather depending) drive to a town with 1200 residents. They hit 10 times as many, during peak tourist season.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
So because it happens in other states proves it's not suspicious?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
For all you big government fans, here's evidence that the government isn't here to help you. No, in fact, it just came in your mouth, and you continue to thank it for doing so.
We need term limits, and we need to get the money (lobbyists) out of action.
Just another day in Paradise
I have to agree with "Doesn't matter about demographics and such if you can't witness the life of your vote..."
Most people either mail in their vote or go down to their local polling place and vote on whatever machine they use to tally the votes. Neither method seems very secure to me since no seems to bother watching the people counting the votes. it's all part of our attitude of "Let someone else do it, I'm much too busy!
That same attitude lends itself to our vote and forget attitude towards keeping an eye on the clowns we put into office.
Until they get too greedy and get themselves caught diddling an intern or sending emails on an unsecured server.
Apparently it's ok to start a war that kills thousands of people because, well, that's just good for business.
I wonder how those guys who allowed the lead problem in Flint, MI got elected.
Bottom line, follow where the local tax money gets spent or who is benefitting from any particular controversial law and you'll find who's likely to be in on the corruption unless the law happens to actually benefit some group of undesirable weak class of people, and then you can look towards whoever is on the top of the status quo heap.
PlaynBass
Yes, since you fools have repeated this claim EVERY SINGLE ELECTION SINCE 1960 and NEVER been able to prove DESPITE the over-registration which is neither illegal nor nefarious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud
Casteism
You might also want to look for news stories about dubious use of absentee ballots in St. Louis City elections. Either people who vote absentee have a natural predilection for voting for the status quo, or somebody has some 'splaining to do.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=st.louis+city+election+fraud+absentee.ballot
Some of that explaining happened in court. It did not go well for the accused.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.