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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?
"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
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
Only if you are an idiot that doesn't understand statistics. Voter impersonation has never and will never be a credible threat. Having meatbags double vote is the least effective and most dangerous method of electoral fraud.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Then there is the question of exactly why a candidate who loses the popular vote is winning via the electoral college.
I think you have to dig deeper and start to look at geographical political divisions and ask if even a majority vote winds up being "fair" if deep divisions exist between rural areas and the West Coast/NE Corridor.
It starts to come down to some basic constitutional-level questions of governance structure, like the reasons why we have bicameral legislature -- to prevent populous states from dominating low-population states.
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?
"Have been drained of all power, so the majority party (right now the republicans) is pushing their agenda"
If you've been paying attention, you would not write this.
Despite the President being elected as a Republican, the Republican Party, especially the leadership, wants nothing to do with him. the bureaucracy is actively undermining him daily. The opposition, of course, is engaged in preventing him from implementing his policies, and this is both expected and tolerable.
But the clearly active soft coup is an actual threat to our nation. If this is successful, as much as 40% of the electorate will abandon the process and subvert it, having been shown that 'playing by the rules' doesn't work any more. This will happen across all level of government and will be nasty.
The majority party, right now the Republicans, is in fact pushing their agenda. Their agenda is to depose the current, lawfully elected President. It will be interesting to see if this is actually tolerable, that is, if they can 'get away' with this by 'playing by the rules'. Their rules. The intelligentsia's rules. The governing class rules.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It's hard to make claims one way or the other about voter fraud when voters need not present reasonable identification. It's impossible to know if there were fraudulent votes if you can't identify legitimate voters.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
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 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.
The left keeps saying and but we live in a nation where you can't buy cough syrup without ID.
The arguments against voter ID are equally illegitimate. Who does not have ID? Seriously? I don't buy it all. There may be a handful of very elderly who don't. That is problem that could be easily addressed, everyone else has little excuse.
The simple fact is in person voter fraud is possible, there is no reason not to control for it because if anything it would give the election a greater appearance of legitimacy, which is critical to a functioning republic/democracy. That alone is a more than strong enough argument to require id.
The truth is there is tons of evidence now that millions of votes are in fact cast by people who are not eligible, because they have lost voting rights due to felony convictions, are not a legal US citizen, etc. ID would raise the bar beyond just getting on the rolls to these ineligible votes. THAT is the real reason the left opposes ID laws, because they do impact elections.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
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