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Indiana Is Purging Voters Using Software That's 99 Percent Inaccurate, Lawsuit Alleges (thedailybeast.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Beast: More than 99 percent of voter fraud identified by a GOP-backed program is false, a study by Harvard, Yale, and Microsoft researchers found. Now Indiana is using the faulty program to de-register voters without warning. In July, Indiana rolled out a new law allowing county officials to purge voter registrations on the spot, based on information from a dubious database aimed at preventing voter fraud. That database, the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, identifies people in different states who share the same name and birthdate. Crosscheck has long been criticized as using vague criteria that disproportionately target people of color. Now Indiana voters who share a name and birthdate with another American can have their registrations removed without warning -- a system ripe for abuse, a new lawsuit claims. Crosscheck's premise is simple. The program aims to crack down on people "double voting" in multiple states, by listing people who share a first name, last name, and birthdate.
Indiana has used Crosscheck for years. But until July, the state had a series of checks on the program. If Crosscheck found that an Indiana resident's name and birthdate matched that of a person in another state, Indiana law used to require officials to ask that person to confirm their address, or wait until that person went two general election cycles without voting, before the person's name was purged from Indiana voter rolls. Under the state's new law, officials can scrub a voter from the rolls immediately. That's a problem for Indiana residents, particularly people of color, a Friday lawsuit from Common Cause and the American Civil Liberties Union argues.
Indiana has used Crosscheck for years. But until July, the state had a series of checks on the program. If Crosscheck found that an Indiana resident's name and birthdate matched that of a person in another state, Indiana law used to require officials to ask that person to confirm their address, or wait until that person went two general election cycles without voting, before the person's name was purged from Indiana voter rolls. Under the state's new law, officials can scrub a voter from the rolls immediately. That's a problem for Indiana residents, particularly people of color, a Friday lawsuit from Common Cause and the American Civil Liberties Union argues.
More than 99 percent of voter fraud identified by a GOP-backed program is false
So then for the GOP it’s working 100% as designed. Sounds like a feature not a bug in their perspective.
You'll never vote again, Chris Johnson, James & Michael & Robert & David & Mary Smith!
Can someone please explain to me how "people of color" are more likely to have the same name and birthdate as people in other states? Also, how is "same name and birthdate" considered to be "vague criteria"? It seems perfectly clear to me.
See that "Preview" button?
Name and birthdate are not particularly unique.
You can't use those two tidbits of information to definitively identify someone.
I work in the insurance industry (with far less people as customers than the state of Indiana has voters) and we routinely get people with the same name and birthday.
However, I don't see how this can "disproportionately target people of color"
Are "people of color" more likely than average to have the same name and birthdate?
A lot of people have the same name as I do, thousands on Slashdot alone.
How many people have my birthday? I dunno, maybe millions.
This is why the US needs to make voting compulsory and a federal obligation.
all colors, actually.
You keep saying ripe. I don't think it means what you think it means.
This is the second article in a short time with this issue. Are we trending a new lose/loose issue?
By resolution of the Indiana General Assembly.
Yeah I see.
Into the trash it goes.
Far too much emphasis on "people of color" in this article (and to be pedantic my color is white so I am a person of color, the color is white). If it was about the clearly dubious logic of banning people who match the name+birthdate of someone else then I would agree with this - it is a terrible criteria. Not comfortable about a racist agenda creeping into the article though. Not John Smith born 1/1/1990 although I am sure there are loads of them.
you piece of shit. eat ten dicks and die
no but seriously. you're an idiot.
it says right in the article that minorities are more likely to share a name than white folks
you didn't read the article, of course. because you're an illiterate piece of shit. maybe you'll get hit by a car on the way home today. we can only hope!
Wow, these conservative states just have no clue. At least there are some states trying to do this right.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/state-bills-would-allow-automatic-voter-registration/
There is a record of you being born, there is a record of your driver's license and passport, there is a record of your hunting/fishing/etc license. Verification of citizenship should be fucking brain dead easy.
You should be automatically registered to vote upon either reaching the age of 18 or becoming a legal citizen 18yr or older, nationwide.
Can someone please explain to me how "people of color" are more likely to have the same name and birthdate as people in other states? Also, how is "same name and birthdate" considered to be "vague criteria"?
Simple:
1) slave names
2) a name and birthdate are not guarantee of unique identification amongst those with common last names.
3) I'll give you one more if you do: people of color are more likely to have had their slaveholders' surnames imposed upon them by the system not uncoincidentally established entirely by land-holding white males at the time. Just because they've opened up franchise and property rights does not adequately compensate for the intervening decades of oppression and marginalization that are demonstrably ongoing today at their behest.
Since I have given you these zero-cost clues for free, please execute some brainpower on critical thinking on how to ensure the system gets fixed so that equality under the law and in the daily interactions of our civil society are rigorously defended as a common good that benefits everyone, much like vaccines, against the autocratic tendencies of those who would corrupt a democratic society.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23X14HS4gLk
...voting that they were chasing down. Who knew it would be the rich with multiple homes in multiple states (like the R politician recently busted for it) that are getting caught up?
All that Indiana needs to check is how many people within the state have their dmv id having same birthdate and same name. Since US population is about 50 times larger, there will be 50 times more people across all states with the same name. So they can identify how many valid people they are removing. By comparing with total they are removing, they can find the accuracy of their system.
It's still a stupid fucking idea. I expect no better from Indiana, though.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
The way they will do this is apply the criteria only in certain districts or counties. They will selectively invalidate people based on their name. They will add race to the equation any way they can.
Lets not forget that the most popular president in history supposedly "lost" the popular vote in 2016, which could only be possible because of mass voter fraud perpetrated by democrat and liberal soros globalists who want to undermine our democracy, confiscate our guns, and just destroy america.
If they passed a law that says "On the day following the next Presidential election, all voter registrations within the state shall be deemed void, the voter roles will be purged, and all eligible voters will need to re-register; all eligible voters will have 364 days in which to register before then next state elections."
This would, I'd be willing to bet, STILL be claimed to "disproportionately affect people of color".
I've got no problem with most of this. But with automatic registration--provided it is for citizens only--you'd still need to verify that the person voting is a) who they say they are, and b) legally a resident of the district in which they are voting. Voter registration is just as much about swearing under penalty of perjury that you live at the address provided and are thus in a particular district, e.g., for House of Representatives or statehouse or city council elections as it is about "signing up to vote". There is also the notion of one person one vote, so there should be something in any system that prevents someone from voting in multiple districts (or even multiple states, for federal elections).
LOL Rolling Stone? Joking, right? They're not what you'd call, "credible". We know for a fact they will lie to bias a story to fit with their pre-existing politics.
Attack the messenger.
Someone's name comes up as a duplicate, so they are purged.
All that means is that they need to register again. Big deal.
But this won't catch much actual fraud. Other steps like tighter controls on absentee voting and requiring identification at the polling place are what's really needed.
While voter fraud dependent democrats would never go for it, an ID with blockchain and photo would be easy enough to create. Database of IDs with pictures. Physical IDs available for free, but hey, we've been wanting that in states for decades and the dems keep saying it's unconstitutional bc it places a burden or poll tax on PoC, a lie perpetuated for years, since you need an ID to cash a check.
Because some names are statistically more frequent among ethnic groups: Lee among Koreans, Singh among Sikhs, etc. The article did explain this, and there's lots of scholarly research on the topic
'nuff said
This is why the US needs to make voting compulsory and a federal obligation.
Voting is not about fairness. Voting is about stabilizing government. It works by figuring out how the civil war over the matter would come out, in a way that is convincing to the losers (so they won't be tempted to fight to reverse it).
If someone is to apathetic about a candidate selection or issue to be bothered to vote on it, they're damned sure too apathetic to take up arms to defend how the election came out.
So including their choice in the outcome, by forcing them to vote, weakens the effectiveness of the election as a convincing predictor of the failure of violent action to reverse the results, making such violent action more likely.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
But are they checking the birthdates?
This is the doubling down of what was done in Florida prior to the 2000 election. This is true voter fraud.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
Answer these two questions quietly to yourself:
How many people do you know named "Bob Smith?"
How many people do you know named "Jameis Tyrone DeAndre Mgabe?"
Q.E.D.
You must have never visited California.
Come on by every November and watch it happen.
Not at all, too bad about this happening in the States, the penalties for Gerrymandering should be life in prison, instead it's legal and popular.
But are they checking the birthdates?
From TFA: "The program aims to crack down on people “double voting” in multiple states, by listing people who share a first name, last name, and birthdate." An election official may then decide to remove any such matching voter from the roll without warning.
the Program was specâ(TM)ed to comport with the new law, the new law sets useless/inaccurate criteria for deleting voters - itâ(TM)s the law that is wrong, not the program.
And about that 99% error rate cited - obviously, this software makes one decision with two possible outcomes, delete or keep each particular voter. For the error rate to be 99% the software would have to make the wrong decision 99% of the time a given voter is NOT on the interstate data base also - and no one says it is.
The requirements were wrong, the software works as it should.
When the law is changed, the program will be adjusted to comply with the law.
Iâ(TM)m not sure how a selection based EXCLUSIVELY on name and birth date is biased against people of color/minorities - anyone care to explain? Do people of color tend to use a very constrained set of first and last names, or do the tend to base the name of their child on the date they were born?
Can the people behind the lawsuit prove that there is a bias that causes people of color to be more likely than people with no color to be incorrectly knock off the poll.
Ken
It is kind of a big deal.
The GOP made it a Yuge talking point, that there were "millions" of fake votes. This bogus Crosscheck system enables the GOP trolls to claim "you see, we told you so. Millions of fake votes and millions of fake voters!"
Never mind that this "evidence" is rather like suggesting that bottled water causes "millions of accidents", because millions of people who drink bottled water wind up in accidents.
The so-called right to vote implies an alleged right to steal from and control other peoplesâ(TM) voluntary activity.
Democracy is a dreadful system that fundamentally devolves to might-makes-right mob rule.
There is a December 2004 born Sri Lankan girl called Tsunami.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Ummm... How is this disproportionately targeting people of color? The summary claims this twice, but doesn't explain how why this is. Do people of color somehow end up with the exact same name and birth date than white people? Because there's plenty of very common anglo-saxon "white" names so there's bound to be plenty of white people who get hit with this.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not flat-out rejecting the idea that this system, which by the looks of it seems to have been originally designed to remove people who have moved out of state off the voter rolls rather than fight voter fraud, couldn't disproportionately affect people of color. However a two paragraph summary of an article on misuse of the system claiming that it disproportionately affects people of color in both paragraphs causes me to become a bit suspicious. I get the feeling this may be the same thing as when people try to fight hacking done by law enforcement, which is mostly used to catch child molesters, people who share child pornography and darknet drug dealers, as something that disproportionately targets people of color because people of color, being poorer, have older and thus less secure devices than white, and more affluent, people.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
When a person shows up to vote, require a state issued photo id and voter card. Run the id. Comes back good, let the vote count. Doesn't, well, the nice officer over there would like to talk to you. Simple and easy. No racial profiling. Massive drop in voter fraud. Which is why it'll never happen.
Compulsory voting is only legitimate, if there is a "NONE OF THE ABOVE" option.
Because otherwise, it falsely forces people to support criminals that they never ever would.
I mean the US is not really different from the GDR there. One party, two virtual parties that belong to the same corporations, what's the difference?
Why not just delete all rolls every 2 years to ensure that those who give a darn will go out of their way to perform civic duty by registering? Make it the off year of congressional terms so that voting polls have a super tuesday registration drive.
Is it because white people have been giving their kids ridiculous names like jobs they'll never have (Tailor? Even misspelled, not a name), or surnames as given names (McKenzie means Son of Ken, not an appropriate first name for a girl idiots!), or they throw random letters in because not knowing how to spell names is a sign of being wealthy and white? (Megyn, really?)
I was in charge of cleaning up a student database when I worked in IT for a school district years ago. While I was manually deduplicating, I found a couple entries with matching first names, last names, and birth dates. Middle names and a few other minor details were different. I was 99% sure this was a data entry error, but called the school's office to figure out which information was correct, and it turns out that these were twins. The parents had decided to give them the same first names, but different middle names.
Voting is serious. Trust in the integrity of the vote is absolutely critical to the survival of the democracy. We shouldn't allow automated systems to purge records any more than we should allow automated systems to create records.
Is the birthdate including year or is it not?
Every day in America there are about 11,000 births - so out of 320 Million people, only 11,000 or so share your birthdate (mm/dd/yyyy), if we factor in an expected lifespan of say 70 years, that means there are about 770,000 people that share your birthday (mm/dd).
Out of those 11,000 people that share your birthdate (mm/dd/yyyy), how many share your full, legal name?
The most popular surname "Smith" accounts for about 1% of the population.
The first name "James" accounts for about 3.318% of the population.
I could find no resource on middle names.
So what are the odds that of the 11,000 births that occur each day result in more than one child with a first name of "James", a surname of "Smith" AND share the same middle name? Twenty seven? The database analyst is on shaky mathematical grounds when he says that there might be as many as 27 name/birthdate matches for a common name - I think he confuses the more common birthday (mm/dd) with the birthdate (mm/dd/yyyy) the Indiana law specifies.
Ken
Get as many of the welfare-sucking useless sons-of-bitches off the voting rolls as possible.
If you accept welfare, you lose your right to vote, period. Otherwise the permanent welfare class continues to vote themselves more money.
This isn't rocket science, fuckfaces.
"This is a concern primarily to 'particularly people of color'?" - John Smith
The bottom line: black people, get yourself some more middle names (which you can continue to fill in, long after everyone else gets a head start on the actual exam questions—what, were you expecting a free lunch?)
But consider the upside: Uvuvwevwevwe Onyetenyevwe Ugwemuhwem Osas votes every damn time.
As does anyone named Covfefe before June 2017 (but Covfefe will probably get through the application line-up a lot faster).
I have an average American name. My health insurance info was recently used in another state for (inexpensive) prescription pills, simply because some random guy told the pharmacy of a national drug store chain their name and birthdate, and they used the info in their system that belonged to me. The health insurance investigator looked into it and said there are 20 other people in the US that share my name and birthdate. Therefore if that's all this Crosscheck program is using, it's going to incorrectly flag me and 19 other guys who are properly registered to vote. Which is a whole lot of BS.
Just think if your name is a common one like John Smith. There are 45000 John Smiths in the US, meaning every one of them shares a birthdate with 122 other John Smiths in this country, on average. You need more than name and birthdate to identify someone uniquely.
I have no problem with this. In my precinct, there are a ton of names to be checked. If 50% are wrong, this increases the size of the book by 50%, slows down registration of voters at voting time, and leads to confusion. I have registered in 6 jurisdictions in my adult life, and have never removed my name from any of them.
The article referenced shows that NATIONWIDE there are a certain number of legit duplications. In this case, Indiana is removing duplications from NEIGHBORING STATES. The referenced article is not a valid discussion of the likelihood of NEIGHBORING STATES showing duplications. Please try to think before absolute crap is pooped onto a page.
Anybody else remember the beer commercial where two guys see a sign for the Lee Family Reunion, and try to crash it? Two white guys? Two conspicuously white guys?
Fortunately, thanks to the Gemutlichkeit power of the advertised brand of beer, all is well.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
From a thoroughly unscientific, haphazard, un-methodical study of the names of coworkers, relatives, friends, and random people I've encountered in the vicinity of such people, I've concluded that rural white people and urban black people tend to give their kids unusual names. Suburban people (except for inner-ring suburban black people) tend to give their kids ordinary generic names. Another disclaimer: because this is something I've been contemplating for some time, it is also very vulnerable to confirmation bias. (You may wish to consider this a joke, rather than a serious observation. I'm still on the fence on that.)
If there actually is some truth to this, it's reasonable to expect that those false positives will be more likely to remove a Michael Jordan and a Nancy Wilson than a Shaniqua Jackson or a Toreyan Williams. This would skew the false removals towards people who are more apt to vote, presumably for Democrats.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.