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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.
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.
Because some names are statistically more frequent among ethnic groups: Lee among Koreans, Singh among Sikhs, etc. The article did explain this, and thereâ(TM)s lots of scholarly research on the topic
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
"Vague" as in "necessary but not sufficient" criteria.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
It mentions it in the story
"Black, Latino, and Asian Americans are statistically more likely to have the same name as someone else in the country.
“If you’re matching a John Lee with a John Lee, that surname is very common in the Korean community, for example,” Chapman said, pointing to a 2014 Al Jazeera investigation that found that 50 percent of U.S. racial minorities share the same last names, as opposed to 30 percent of white Americans."
that is assuming you were actually asking that as a question and not just being a worthless troll.
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?
Nothing wrong with "ripe for abuse". Now, if TFS had said, "ripe with abuse" (instead of "rife with abuse"), you'd have a point.
I guess they're just as likely to have the same birthdate, but more likely to have the same firstname+lastname combo, possibly due to culture differences. Smaller specific name pool?
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
By resolution of the Indiana General Assembly.
You've never heard of the birthday paradox have you?
If you're going to be all smug clever rightwinger, it helps if you can actually be clever and not thick as pigshit. Linking to an article which just talks about numerator and fails to mention denominator makes you seem like you wouldn't have graduated high school even with sympathetic teachers. Amazingly enough, what matters is not how many people share a name, but how many share a name in comparison to the sample size. There are rather more white males than hispanic females in the US population, so the 38k James Smiths account for 0.04% of the 120m or so white males in the US, while the 32k Maria Garcias on the list in the same article you chose to link to account for 0.18% of the 21m or so Hispanic females in the US -- ie Maria Garcia appears as a name 4.5 times more often among Hispanic women than does James Smith among white men.
The only soft bigotry of low expectations around here, mate, is that you don't consider yourself obliged to know some basic fucking maths, you numpty. Try reading a book on fractions one day as an alternative to masturbating over Tweets from Milo.
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.
Except there are statistics to prove the claim.
Page seven of 2010 Census' surname data.
https://www2.census.gov/topics...
For people to lazy to look, the White population has 4.5% of the population in top 10 surnames (last names) and would require 239 surnames to make up 25% of the population.
The Black population has 13% in the top 10 surnames and only 43 surnames to make up 25% of population.
And the the Hispanic population is 16.3% for top 10 surnames and 26 surnames to cover 25% of population.
I'll answer your 2nd question first:
We don't know what criteria uses to put people in its database -- that makes it vague. Sure name and birthdate are mentioned, but its not exactly defined in depth how those are used.
For example, if you thought John Wesley Washington and John Arthur Washington were two different names, according to crosscheck, you'd be wrong. It doesn't count middle names or intitials.
Additionally stuff like John Smith Sr., John Smith Jr., and John Smith III, are all considered name matches too.
As for dispproportionately targeting people of color. The article mentions that 95% of people with the last name "Kim" are asian, and 95% of the people with the last name Washington are black.
However, 95%+ of people with the last name Feldman or Hagen are white. Nevertheless, they do make a reference to actually analyzing census data; and the claim that people of color are statistically more likely to share a name than white people is certainly plausible. I'd need to see a study to know more.
Additionally, its a republican project, funded by republicans and sold to republicans... odds are if it was turning away more republican voters than democratic voters they would have shut it down by now. Or tweaked their criteria so as not to both with the Feldman's and Hagen's of the world, and just focus on the Washington's and the Kim's...
That is what I thought. And all this is due to states *refusing* to provide Social Security Numbers in their publicly available data rolls.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The fact is they are purging the voter rolls for no good reason.
No, they are doing it for a good reason, but the data is not sufficient to the task. Its lack of "sufficient" applies across the board, to John Smith and Chan'e'qua N'Gboro both.
God you people are so fucking dumb. The numerator is not the only thing that counts (frequency of surname); the denominator counts too (number of people). John Smith is statistically *less frequent* as a name among white men than Maria Garcia is among Hispanic women. It just is. It's a fact. Go look it up and then crawl back into your sewer of self-righteous bigotry.
And how many of those have the same birthdate and have been independently verified as being different people? Without that information the database cannot be said to be stopping hundreds of thousands of Jose Garcia's from voting.
Possibly, but I can't find any sources that even attempt to debunk this particular article.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
They can be more affected due to some specific name or last name distribution among population. For example over 39% of Vietnamese have last name Nguyen which greatly increases chance of collision. In comparison even the most popular "white" last names in US (e.g. Smith) don't reach 1% of population.
But there are less minorities than there are white people (duh) which means they're less likely to have the same birthdate than white people with the same name. So it cannot be said they are more likely to be excluded than white people
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?
Blacks have less variety in their last names. When slavery ended in 1865, most freedmen took the name of the plantation owner where they worked. At the time, the states of the ex-Confederacy were mostly of English or Scottish ancestry. So blacks have names like Smith and Jones, but very rarely Kowalski or Schmidt.
Asians and Hispanics are also much more likely than whites to have name collisions.
From the Wikipedia page: "white voters are underrepresented by 8 percent, African Americans are overrepresented by 45 percent; Hispanic voters are overrepresented by 24 percent; and Asian voters are overrepresented by 31 percent"
People lower on the economic ladder are also likely to have fewer resources to appeal and rectify their removal.
Also, how is "same name and birthdate" considered to be "vague criteria"? It seems perfectly clear to me.
It is vague in the sense of being inaccurate, out-of-date, and maintained by people with partisan motives.
They can be more affected due to some specific name or last name distribution among population. For example over 39% of Vietnamese have last name Nguyen which greatly increases chance of collision. In comparison even the most popular "white" last names in US (e.g. Smith) don't reach 1% of population.
Ooooh exciting! Apparently, there's a "correct" way to spell names! Who decides that, pray tell?
Your right. The criteria is bad, but there is no evidence that minorities are being excluded more often than white people.
...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.
Because then they would find that voter fraud is more common than we imagine. I know for a fact there are some people (mostly GOP voting older people) that register in multiple counties. These people donâ(TM)t consider it fraud because they have a presence in those counties (perhaps through family or property) and from what I understand it is commonly encouraged to do so by get-out-the-vote representatives.
I donâ(TM)t understand the complaint either, I do understand statistics and I will grant them that the criteria listed are statistically going to get them some false positives which is a problem. But I donâ(TM)t see how this targets or benefits any party specifically given the margins are so small, they typically donâ(TM)t sway much if any of the vote.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
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."
how is "same name and birthdate" considered to be "vague criteria"?
It is not uncommon to have many instances of multiple voters with the same first and last name and date of birth within a state wide population. So comparing records nationwide is sure to generate many false positives. And if the comparison is as simplistic as advertised, and does not account for a voter's status in either jurisdiction, you will likely have many cases where the voter is the same person and their status may not be eligible for their previous address (e.g. status may be "moved from jurisdiction" in Ohio or some other form of "no contact" status that precedes being deleted from the voter rolls), but the person would still be removed in Indiana per the article because they matched a record in a different system. Many systems keep voter records for years, so if the program doesn't account for status at all they are literally doing it wrong.
Itâ(TM)s closer to 1 in 23 for a birth date but that doesnâ(TM)t work if you include birth year.
So statistically speaking, if you have 100 people with the exact same First, Middle and Last Name born in the same year, on average 4-5 people per common name pair across the US will share the same birthday.
Not sure how this pans out across 300M people with a somewhat uneven birth year distribution but I highly doubt a few hundred votes are going to matter.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
It's like the game of telephone, meaning gets lost. The original statement (Al Jazeera) was: " a sixth of all Asian-Americans share just 30 surnames and 50 percent of minorities share common last names, versus 30 percent of whites"
Are "people of color" more likely than average to have the same name and birthdate?
Yes.
Data is in a post upthread: https://tech.slashdot.org/comm...
No, not really. THINK about it. people brought over as slaves were given arbitrary english names in many cases. I doubt that naming was particularly creative. Their descendants are still here and still have one of the fairly small and unimaginative last names assigned to their ancestor 150 years ago/
Because having a publicly available database of names with social security numbers would have absolutely no consequences at all.
Oh wait, it would.
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?
There might be various reasons. Maybe people of color are more likely to have collisions in names/birthdays for some reason. I'm not sure and I haven't RTFA.
Sometimes, when they say it disproportionately impacts people of color, it's not necessarily that it happens more likely in those populations, but that those populations have a harder time dealing with it when it happens. Like maybe it happens equally in all populations, but minority populations have less access to challenge their de-registration, for some reason.
Also, sometimes what's really going on is that there's selective enforcement. Like maybe people can be de-registered or not, depending on the judgement of some official, and that official chooses to de-register minorities more often than white people. That's what used to happen with literacy tests, and that's what still happens with some photo-ID requirements. Poll workers are allowed to use their own judgement as to whether to enforce the requirement, and the poll workers enforce it more often among minorities.
Also, how is "same name and birthdate" considered to be "vague criteria"?
Again, I haven't RTFA, but there are two obvious possibilities: (1) Maybe there are other criteria used in addition to having the same name and birthdate, and those criteria are vague; or (2) Maybe they don't actually mean that the criteria are vague, but that the criteria used leave it vague as to whether the person should be de-registered.
I would call CPS for verbal abuse. If theyâ(TM)re verbally abusive outside, imagine how they are once they get inside.
Obviously given their political status they wonâ(TM)t be prosecuted but at least attempt.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Like Smith or Jones, you say? Both quite common surnames among Englishmen and Welshmen (respectively). Or Baker. Barber. Cook. Farmer
Yes, a lot of people, black, white, everything in between have "profession" surnames from back in the day.
Note that my own last name isn't a "profession" surname, it's a "location" surname. I used to think it was rare, till I found myself in an airport in northern England and discovered it was (relatively) common in that particular place....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
It doesn't matter what the most popular name is. What matters is the total number of people affected.
If "Smith" counts for 1%, but Johnson, etc. also count for large chunks, the odds that any given person will have a first+last match with another is still substantial. People aren't matching against X Smith, they're matching against X Y. Smith being a common value for Y means nothing.
Similarly, pointing to 39% Nguyen is also pointing to 61% NOT Nguyen. What are the distributions of the NOT Nguyen names? (Hint: Whatever the distribution is, the end result is it perfectly offsets the Nguyen distribution when looking at the total population.)
You need to look at the full set to make any claims because a single match counts, and percentages within a population don't mean squat since the chance for a collision is determined by the raw population size. 1% of X vs 39% of Y doesn't matter if X is much larger than Y. You're looking for collisions per population, and the probability is for ANY match, not a match with a specific name. It's the same issue as the Birthday Paradox. ANY match counts, you have to look at the whole set, not individual chance.
Further, why are you comparing "white" to "Vietnamese" instead of "white" to "asian" or "German" to "Vietnamese"?
From TFA...
We were able to obtain more lists – Georgia and Washington state, the total number of voters adding up to more than 1 million matches – and Crosscheck's results seemed at best deeply flawed. We found that one-fourth of the names on the list actually lacked a middle-name match. The system can also mistakenly identify fathers and sons as the same voter, ignoring designations of Jr. and Sr. A whole lot of people named "James Brown" are suspected of voting or registering twice, 357 of them in Georgia alone. But according to Crosscheck, James Willie Brown is supposed to be the same voter as James Arthur Brown. James Clifford Brown is allegedly the same voter as James Lynn Brown.
Minne-snow-da: Winter is comming...
people brought over as slaves were given arbitrary english names in many cases.
As were many people from countries with difficult-to-pronounce or spell monikers given simple names by the immigration officials when they got off the boat. It wasn't an exclusive problem at the time.
I've got the most 'basic bitch' white boy name in the world, I swear. There are hundreds of people with my exact same first and last name in every state of this nation. Even if you add my middle name, you'll still find dozens of matches in a state like California or Florida. Add date of birth? I've had at least one exact match (first, middle, last, DOB) like that while going to physical therapy. Now I'm going to have to double check that I am properly registered to vote, even though I do not live in Indiana.
Now hold on a minute. The whole problem started when some dumb shit decided to fuck his mother. If they'd left well alone, we might have been spared his particular brand of idiocy
If you know this for a fact, you should notify someone other than /. Why don't you care about the sanctity of elections?
Since when? Are you a racist bigot saying minorities are too stupid to have a photo id?
No, you're the racist bigot for jumping to intelligence as the reason to not have a photo ID.
The reason minorities are less likely to have a photo ID is money. Members of minority groups are much more likely to be in poverty, especially in the strict voter ID states.
IDs cost money. Even when the ID itself is free, the documentation required to get the ID (ie. birth certificate) is not free. The offices you have to go to to get the ID and supporting documentation are only open during business hours, and minorities are more likely to be working in a job that will not let them easily take time off to go to those offices.
Then there is also the careful efforts in placing the offices where one gets IDs or supporting documentation. In states with strict voter ID, they tend to not be in places close to public transportation. Frequently there are very few offices in the state, thus requiring a long trip to get to the office, exacerbating the "need to take time off work" issue.
This is to get an ID that will only be used to vote. Since we're talking about people in poverty, they are less much likely to own a car, so a driver's license is a waste of money.
Oddly enough, easy to get IDs like hunting licenses are accepted in certain strict-ID states, but student IDs are not. On an unrelated subject, the demographics of who has a hunting license vs who has a student ID miraculously happens to favor one party.
Oddly enough, the poor prioritize paying for necessities like food over the cost of getting an ID, even when getting that ID risks their job.
Meanwhile, you probably already have a car and thus already have ID that works.
Only if you are lazy or stupid and don't care about the implications when deciding acceptable error levels. Much less than 0.18% is a problem when it concerns life and death decisions, like government. Much less of one type of Tylenol was contaminated with cyanide and it killed
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.
It can be extremely difficult, especially for older people. Many of them never even had a birth certificate, or if they did, it has some error on it. Getting that sorted out so they can get an ID is a nightmare. And yes, it disproportionately affects minorities, because they're the ones who were most impacted by the lack of (correct) documentation.
You had a birth certificate issued, you have a SSN, you pay taxes
And if a birth certificate, SSN card or copy of your 1040 were accepted as ID, you'd have a point.
Unfortunately, those are not accepted as ID. So you have to pay to get a photo ID.
Even if the state makes the ID itself free, getting a copy of the supporting documentation is not free. For example, to get a certified copy of my birth certificate via the not-at-all-screwing-the-public contractor that allows me to order one online would cost $80. If I can wait for a mail-in form to be processed and then the response returned, I only have to pay $50.
And that's just one supporting document. To get the ID, I have to have more than one supporting document.
And if you're not paying for utilities where you live (say, living with a family member like many people in poverty do), then it is nearly impossible to get sufficient supporting documentation.
Further, strict ID states have ensured that the offices to get those IDs, as well as the supporting documentation, are only open during business hours. People who are poor tend to work jobs that will not let them randomly take time off to go get an ID.
And even further, there has been a lot of work done in strict ID states to locate the ID offices away from public transportation. And to significantly limit the number of offices that can issue such IDs, ensuring an even longer period of time has to be taken off in order to get an ID.
in the US you can't seem to get your groceries without a car
Not even remotely true.
First, a whole lot of people live in cities. Especially the poor. That makes getting your groceries without a car quite possible.
Second, in places where that is not possible, poor people rely on friends or family members to drive them. Despite this, they still have the right to vote.
Btw, you know what's a fantastic way to get deported if you're in the US illegally? Go to a polling place. Lots of people, potentially law enforcement presence. They have to guess at what name to use, and if they guess wrong (someone who already voted) they get arrested and thrown out of the country. That's why undocumented workers don't actually try to vote. It would be incredibly stupid.
Great. So how many of those browns have the same birthdate? And did they do a similar analysis of white people to see whether or not the same occurence is happening there?
Now, consider what might have constituted "Hard to pronounce", the fact that many slaves HAD no last name, and how much say a slave might get in what they're called.
Exactly what has that got to do with having a photo-id?
So, according to you, in a state that requires photo-id to register or vote, instead of actually having a photo-id, I can just open up a government database, there and then, point to the entry that describes me and say: "see, I don't need no stinkin photo-id, I'm in your database, bitches!"
Somehow, I don't think it works that way.
Oh, and there is no US government file or database that holds my birth record.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
You don't need to use a contrived example. The facts are out there: there are 38k James Smiths and 32k Maria Garcias. Those numbers are more than high enough to ensure there will be multiple collisions in both groups. But Hispanic women will be more affected on average by those collisions than white men.
What would you use? Seems like name and DOB isn't that great, either.
Somewhat like that, only moreso.
Your comment appears to have nothing to do with the comment you were replying to. Congratulations! Non sequitur of the day aware goes to you.
About as many as other people with strange spelling irregardless* their ethnic group? Really...
You could look up the statistics if you'd want to. I don't. I hope the ACLU doesn't cry wolf but really don't care enough to check.
But if you please report back.
(* yeah, suck it up)
Perhaps they don't want to.
Except that there is so little variation that it is still a bigger problem.
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
In a democracy (even a representative one) a vote should count. That's the basic thing. Even if it doesn't change anything.
If it also included a place of birth (with sufficient precision) we'd not have this discussion at all.
Okay. Prove it.
Until you do I'll and any reasonable being will assume the data presented is correct - which I'd do even it it was presented by a child eating nazi communist.
You see facts are the things that don't change because of a bias. Not what you wrote above.
If I were being deliberately stupid, there wouldn't be Steven, Steve, Stephen, Stephan, Stefan, etc. Nor 17 ways that Shakespeare spelled his surname. Not to mention that there is no possibility of a correct way of spelling an anglicised name from another language, like Muhammad, Mohamed, Mohammed, etc.
There aren't right and wrong ways to spell names: there are common and less common ways. As with everything else in this vein, 9 times out of 10, this is just snowflake whinging from middle aged white men who pine for the 50s when everyone else knew their place. I mean, have you listened to yourself? Climbing on some kind of high horse because someone else calls their son DeShawn or what have you
Great. So how many of those browns have the same birthdate?
Not relevant. And you do understand that Brown isn't an uncommon last name?
And did they do a similar analysis of white people to see whether or not the same occurence is happening there?
Not relevant. But if the description is right then the same things should be happening to white* people too. The frequency though?
(* I assume we don't include the Irish, Germans and Swedes in that group? The "modern" description of whites being all people originating in Europe (and even Ireland!) is frankly disgusting and a recent invention. God save the English and no other than the English! /s)
Does not sound surprising to me, we have such an odd mix of traditions like some are trade based (Smith, Baker, Miller, Wright), some are relations frozen in time (Johnson, Wilson, Anderson, Robinson), some are location based (Hill), some are colors (Brown, White, Green), some are attributes (Young, Walker, Moore, Hall) and none are very dominating. Most of these would be highly volatile back before we started preserving them as-is. In other cultures the surname may have been a family/clan/caste/tribe name passed down unchanged, that would obviously make a huge difference. And slavery is its own story, they probably weren't very creative with slave names.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
This is a case of you being an idiot. How about understanding before condemning? Nah, not your style. Idiot.
My family didn't even have a hard-to-pronounce name and was spelled just like it sounds. They gave out new names to "Americanize." Reasoning this was to help them is revisionist history..
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
It's a gigantic deal if they didn't know they were unregistered and then they show up at the polls and are told "Sorry, registration closed six weeks ago." The story says that people are unregistered without being informed.
I am Robert Lee Claypool currently of Indianapolis. There is a Robert Lee Claypool of Anderson. I don't know if our names will collide and they remove the both of us and not tell either of us our names are not on the rolls and then when we go to vote, no count.
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.
Even in this day and age this has got to be snark. Please?
But are they checking the birthdates?
Because the Democrats won't provide one in Blue States (and in some states, it's not a part of the dataset to begin with, which to me, proves the Republican point that Democrats are into voter fraud).
I, on the other hand, consider evidence of fraudulent votes to be evidence of "voter fraud".
But I guess if you can't find any evidence of fraudulent votes then you need to take whatever kame argument is available to justify disenfranchising legal voters.
I stole this Sig
For people to lazy to look, the White population has 4.5% of the population in top 10 surnames (last names) and would require 239 surnames to make up 25% of the population.
The Black population has 13% in the top 10 surnames and only 43 surnames to make up 25% of population.
And the the Hispanic population is 16.3% for top 10 surnames and 26 surnames to cover 25% of population.
Don't worry, it sounds like the officials have some discretion so not every flagged name will be immediately crossed off.
If some officials happen to cross off minorities with much greater frequency than whites... well I guess that's unfortunate but surely not an entirely desired and expected outcome.
I stole this Sig
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
The discussion started with a bold assertion that minorities are more likely to have name collisions.
You've lost the thread, unconventional names certainly impact the discussion.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
What a strange country this is, that everyone was born in the same year.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
while proving your stupidity again only took you 7.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
a) good for you
b) you're spreading bullshit
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Alas, there are. Mont Vernon, New Hampshire is so named because it was unintentionally spelled incorrectly. The mistake was later noticed, but the town was not allowed to change the spelling to correct it.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
"Doing it wrong" is not the same as "vague criteria."
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
this is the same kind of conservative bullshit that they used to excuse poll taxes and literacy tests.
saying "oh, you think they're too dumb to read? who's the bigot now", while ignoring that at the time illiteracy was dramaitcally higher among minorities.
or saying "oh, you think they're too poor to vote? who's the bigot now", while ignoring that at the time (and still today) poverty was dramaitcally higher among minorities.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
We know for a fact they will lie to bias a story to fit with their pre-existing politics.
takes one to know one, eh?
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
"So statistically speaking, if you have 100 people with the exact same First, Middle and Last Name born in the same year, on average 4-5 people per common name pair across the US will share the same birthday."
If you read the article, they don't even look at middle names. So John Arthur Adams is a match for John Willy Adams, and both are matches for John Randall Adams Jr.
The algorithm crosscheck uses is around 99% wrong for good reasons.
Most places, felons lose the right to vote.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
You clearly encountered a typo or mistaken word, but the fact that you respond by ignoring the obvious thrust of the claim shows that you're just a racist asshole looking for an excuse to argue about something that is obvious, and easily verified.
Fuck off nazi.
Tell you what, you give us voter ID laws, we'll give you automatic registration. Compromise! And it's not like plenty of first world countries don't already have voter ID laws in place with no issues of suppression resulting. Those kooky Canadians for instance.
there's a "correct" way to spell names! Who decides that, pray tell?
Easy, you just ask WombatHumper. But make sure to include a photograph of the person, it helps him to measure if their spelling is allowed.
I'll bet monopoly$20 that he can't correctly define the word "dictionary," either.
Do you have any idea how much of a racist asshole you look like when you trot out these sorts of refuted-many-times-over tropes, in exactly the dog-whistle part of the conversation?
It is really pathetic. You should attempt some "theory of mind" and ask yourself if you're really being as clever as you think, or if you just look like a low-IQ racist who is too much of a chickenshit to admit their motivations and communicate honestly?
Where I work (Europe) we use [all first/middle/etc. names] + [last name] + [birth date] + [birth place] + [birth country]. That's pretty good. This is in Western Europe, however, and still not completely without false duplicates. But the few we get we can deal with manually.
The problem is that with the system of name+DOB, even if you have just 100 duplicates, only 1 is fraudulent so far. That could be an issue with 10000 duplicates or more so it's good to reduce it, but even then voter fraud is pretty much a non-issue. Unfortunately, some assholes found it convenient to use the non-issue to make it easier to de-register people. This impacts poor and uneducated people more than well-educated people and rich people, who are more prone to register in the first place.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
And it only gets worse for Hispanics, because they have a strong cultural preference for biblical first names and so those are more commonly repeated too! Non-Hispanic white Americans are not only less likely to have biblical names, but when they do they use a wide variety of name forms taken from all the European languages, and Hispanics are usually only using the Spanish version.
That's how populists get voted in: their simple worldview is easier to explain.
While you're still trying to explain all the subtleties about the jobs market, they just shouted "mexicans out means more new jobs!" and "climate change is fake news!". Now you have two stories to tell while they're already on number three to seven. That' race is hard to win.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Maybe your parents should have stopped inbreeding first...
To fix your lack of education on names, please read this: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/...
It's even on-topic.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Perhaps, but far from unique. How about adding a unique identifier, like their Social Security Number perhaps?
That's a great idea ... why has no one thought of that before. ;)
From the study cited in TFA: "Crosscheck’s data ... contain, when available, the last four digits of each registration’s Social Security number (SSN4)." So they used that to compare name/DOB pairings (the proposed criterion for removal) where SSN4 was available in the data. Thus:
Using data provided to Iowa in 2012, we identified 1,483 [name/DOB] pairings with complete SSN4 information in which both registration records were used to vote in 2012. In more than 99.5% of these pairings, the flagged registrations had different SSN4s, supporting our intuition that our model estimates an upper bound on the number of double votes cast in 2012.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
I have no idea why this hasn't been done yet in the USA, but in The Netherlands it's illegal to use the SSN for any purpose, except for interactions with the state (taxes and compliance). This means the SSN is actually not that sensitive, as business are banned from relying on it.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
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
How many of those Jose Garciaâ(TM)s in 27 states share the EXACT SAME BIRTH DATE (not just same year, same month, or same date of month, but all three EXACTLY the same?) - That is required to be a candidate to be kicked from the voting polls...
Ken
Oh fuck off. This is exactly how my son got disenfranchised.
Tighten the ID laws, have the place to get ID 50 miles away with no public transit and charge $70 for that ID.
My wife, they even got more creative. Tell her she is still registered in the same name that her government ID is in and she has used for at least a dozen elections and then change it so when she shows up to vote, her ID is no good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
What they did to my wife was showed she was still registered in her maiden name that she has used for over a dozen elections and is the name that she has on all her ID and bills and then magically changed it on voting day to her married name. And of course, the marriage license she brought along was not good enough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
On the other hand, in the village my wife was born in, common last names include Skead, Skeed, Skede, and Skied. Just like whoever spelt Vermin wrong, they were probably illegitimate and someone phonetically spelt it. This is made even worse with strong accents, which is probably the case with your example considering they used a foreign spelling of mount
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
"This would, I'd be willing to bet, STILL be claimed to "disproportionately affect people of color".
It probably would. If its like any number of other government services... its only available 9 to 4 monday to friday; no weekends, no holidays.
And the registration process will prefer ID like a passport & drivers license & Credit card. So rich folks will breeze through.
Poor folks will have a much harder time getting there, will need time off work, etc, etc. And then someone who lives with their brother's family will be trying to register with an library card and an expired student card...
It may not directly be targeting people of color. But it hits them a lot harder anyway. So 'disproportionally affect' is still a valid criticism.
Whenever you make a claim like this, citing the statistics is mandatory...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You don't know you've been purged until you show up to vote. So you vote won't count but you may get a provisional ballot. But the very fact of asking for one makes people suspicious that you're one of the mythical hordes of people bused in to sway elections, so good luck getting counted that way. Then in the intervening two years, you accidentally get removed again...
Actual fraud is rare. This is solving a problem that does not exist.
The odds of a collision between two people with the same name and birthdate are large enough to sway some elections, especially if the rule is applied in an unfair manner (at the registrar's discretion rather than automatically).
I live in California and you are a liar a fool and an ass.
How many of those Jose Garciaâ(TM)s in 27 states share the EXACT SAME BIRTH DATE (not just same year, same month, or same date of month, but all three EXACTLY the same?) - That is required to be a candidate to be kicked from the voting polls...
My name is less common than Jose Garcia, but still incredibly common. I've gone to a small physical therapy clinic and have ran into another patient that started physical therapy on the exact same day that I started with my exact full name and exact same date of birth. That was at just one (independent) clinic in one city. There are hundreds of people with my exact full name in the state of California. I do not know how many share a date of birth with me, but I'd be surprised if the answer was 0.
All of those people claiming they don't have money or time will have 300+ smart phone, 100+ cable tv plan and big screen tv. Also complete bullshit that they cannot get an ID because they might have to work, almost all jobs require a photo id.
Then show up at the registrar of voters and register in person. The person with that name and address gets to vote one time only in the election, and the name is checked off. So to commit fraud in person, you have to show up and supply a name and address that matches that of someone who did not yet vote. If the real voter does show up later then the vote is tossed out and there's some proof of fraud occuring.
However the numbers commit fraud this way are extremely minor. If you want to steal an election you would never bring in bus loads of illegal immigrants, that's an absurdly stupid plot. If you want to steal an election you hack the electronic voting machines, you deny voting rights to a certain class of people, you steal the actual ballot boxes, and so forth.
Trying to commit the sort of wholesale fraud that Trump believes in is very difficult and not very effective. But it's a great bit of propaganda to try and get new voting laws in place that actually can make it easier to sway elections. Even if you don't manager to sway the elections, you've still gotten your supporters to be angry and loud and more likely to show up at the polls and get others to show up.
Voting rights are for everyone, informed or not. You don't want only the elite 1% of informed people to vote (besides, most people who think they are well informed are still in a bubble that don't listen to all sides of an issue).
Social security takes a LOT of time. I stood in line to get a replacement card once, it makes the DMV seem enjoyable. This can be an all day event for some depending upon their transportation.
Remember, these are voters who can't drive and have to take the bus, the elderly, people who live a very long way from the closest DMV, people on a fixed income, people with disabilities, etc.
Also complete bullshit that they cannot get an ID because they might have to work, almost all jobs require a photo id.
Psst...You don't need a voter ID-valid photo ID to complete an I-9.
All of those people claiming they don't have money or time will have 300+ smart phone, 100+ cable tv plan and big screen tv
You'd be surprised what you can get for much cheaper than retail. Like that "300+" smart phone that was actually $0 because it's a hand-me-down from a friend.
I've lived and voted in California.
It turns out you can't assume every Hispanic-looking person is not a citizen. Who knew?!
Actually, there was just a story about this on This American Life, this last weekend. A statistical study of the expected occurrence rate of the same name/birthdate across the entire US voter registration base.
https://www.thisamericanlife.o...
The details in short...
- There are 3 million name/birthday matches across all states (roughly what DT/GOP claims are fraudulent votes)..
- Removing bad data (i.e. no birthday so use a default day of Jan 1, etc.) reduces that to 750,000 matches.
- Using a simple expected match based on statistical distribution (the 1 in 23), shows an expected 720,000 matches of different people in different states with the same name/birthdate.
- Expanding the above to include common naming practices and oddities (i.e. Naming children "June" born in the summer, naming children "Carol" around the holidays, etc.) results in another 10,000 expected matches.
- Going back to the "bad data" problem, the researchers then went back and reviewed the actual voting signature roles compared against the database reported voters who showed up... which removed another 20,000 matches nationally.
That leaves... 720,000+10,000 statistically expected name/date matches, plus 20,000 statistically found database errors, out of 750,000 "double voters".... i.e. ZERO actual double votes.
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."
"Actual fraud is rare. This is solving a problem that does not exist."
No, Actual fraud convictions are rare. This because voter fraud is extremely difficult to prove at the individual voter level. You basically have to be caught by the Poll workers somehow recognizing that you are not the Darinbob that is their neighbor and then them managing to hold you there until the police arrive to arrest you.
If they don't hold you there and have you arrested on the spot, you disappear forever and they have no way to prosecute and thus no record of your attempt at voter fraud. If they don't catch you out at the poll, they might realize later that your voter signature does not match that on record and they disqualify the vote, but that's not counted as voter fraud, just a disqualified ballot. Or they may never realize that you committed voter fraud.
That it is rarely prosecuted does not mean it does not occur far more often than you are willing to admit.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
it helps if you can actually be clever and not thick as pigshit
Then he wouldn't vote right.
Democracy is a dreadful system that fundamentally devolves to might-makes-right mob rule.
Good thing you guys don't have an actual democracy then.
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.
I think it depends upon how the data is used. If you have a black district and then apply the program, and you have a white district and do not apply the program, then the bias results. Or just wait longer in white districts before asking for confirmation. From what I gather in the synopsis, there was a recent change from requiring confirmation to allowing election officials to immediately purge the roles.
Or you could just fill out the forms (available at any post office, library or civic/community center. I've even seen churches that maintain a supply of them.) and mail them in, or fill them out online.
Yes standing in line at the SSA was very slow. This is on purpose, they want people to use the widely available alternatives, it cuts down on their more expensive and least efficient manpower costs. Further who in this day and age does not have a SSN? If you have a job, and pay taxes or if you get any form of SS, Medicaid, Medicare or any government assistance you have to have one. Are you assuming that minorities are incompetent at obtaining this identifier so basic and universal it's issued at birth now? You can't leave the hospital with your new child without completing the forms to request their SSN.
Yet with this identifier so universally required the left insists that there are supposedly many poor minority voters who are incapable of obtaining an SSN? Requiring basic identity is not discrimination. Assuming that minorities cannot get something so essential to life in this world is far more discriminating and racist.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
I don't buy that for a second. Nor do I accept the argument that the office hours represent an insurmountable obstacle to any group. Every employed person is likely to be working between 9 and 5, Monday through Friday. Is it inconvenient to give up a lunch break, or lose a bit of time on the clock? Sure. It's inconvenient for anyone, yet somehow everyone has always managed to deal with it.
Think about it, if getting to a government office is a problem for getting an ID, then it's a problem to get to any office for any reason. Yet people manage every day no matter what they do or how much they make.
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?)
The issues are more of the Indiana Government being lazy in their zealousness to purge voters. I know one person that was hit by this law in its previous form. He made a good argument that all they had to do was check the tax records to see that he was paying property tax on the residence listed for voting. And that he had been paying property taxes there for over 15 years. Everything is hinging on getting a non-certified letter checking the address.
Now it can be even more arbitrary by putting the power into the the highly trained poll workers for instant deregistration.
Everybody join in with their own inane argument!
Jaywalking in NYC is rarely prosecuted therefore jaywalking in NYC is rare.
There have been enough convictions of the last few years to show that it is not rare. Election tampering has happened for generations (Vote Early. Vote Often.) But you think it doesn't occur anymore?
Are you concerned about who makes voting machines? How they're counted? Then you ought to be also concerned about who votes. It's simple. Present a state issued ID in order to vote. Are you worried about poor people? Then make these IDs free.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
You've not read the thread, have you? Never mind, no-one expects it of you.
I'm perfectly well aware of what the thread started with. I was following up on your very own "bold assertion", to borrow a phrase: the idea that there's a right way to spell names.
The system can also mistakenly identify fathers and sons as the same voter, ignoring designations of Jr. and Sr.
Sounds like these "experts" didn't do any real analysis at all. How do father and son get identified as having the same birthdate (including year, which the program they criticize is using)?
Great article!
You've not got your reasoning right at all.
There are 38k James Smiths in the US, out of 120m white men.
There are 32k Maria Garcias in the US, out of 21m Hispanic women.
James Smiths account for 0.04% of white men and appears 4.5 times less often among that population than Maria Garcia appears among Hispanic women (0.18%). So the Hispanic population sees a higher proportion of collisions than the white population.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
That it is rarely prosecuted also does not mean it does not occur far *less* often than you are willing to assume. I have seen plenty of hypotheses about how fraudulent votes might be cast. However, I have yet to see any evidence that fraudulent voting has been a major problem (or even a minor problem) in any state- or nationwide election during my adult life (> 30 years). If it's a problem, we should be able to prove it's a problem.
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?
There are hundreds of people with my exact full name in the state of California. I do not know how many share a date of birth with me, but I'd be surprised if the answer was 0.
I wouldn't be surprised - sharing a birthday (Like October 31st) is trivial, sharing a birth date (October 31st, 1972) is exceptionally rare. The odds of you ever meeting someone with exactly your same birth date (mm/dd/yyyy) - ignoring their name - is extremely unusual; factor in that their name has to match also and it will likely never happen.
In the United States, there are about 10,829 births per day - and out of those 10,829 births the odds of two mothers, both named "Smith", with both deliver male children and both will name their children "John" (neither choosing "Jon" or "Johnathan") seems pretty small to me - not zero, but pretty small.
There are lots of people named "Smith" - tons of them.
There are a large number of people named "John Smith" - lots of them.
There are likely a fair number of people named "John Smith" with birthdays of October 31st.
But do you really think there are that many people named "John Smith" that celebrate their birthdays on October 31st and are EXACTLY the same age (in other words they share a birth DATE, not just a birth DAY)?
The surname smith accounts for about 1% of the population, the first name James accounts for about 3.318% of the population, so that gives us a one out of 100 chance that a child will be have a surname of "Smith", and a 1 out of thirty chance that that child with the smith surname will have a first name of "James". I defer to statisticians to do the math.
Ken
That's the spirit!
"I don't buy that for a second."
"Every employed person is likely to be working between 9 and 5, Monday through Friday. Is it inconvenient to give up a lunch break, or lose a bit of time on the clock?"
Yeah, people living paycheck to paycheck are going to be hurt more by giving up some time on the clock. And they likely work for employers who won't give them the time off.
"Sure. It's inconvenient for anyone, yet somehow everyone has always managed to deal with it. "
The people who didn't manage to deal with it didn't vote.
"Rich folks would breeze through because they have drivers licenses?? Poor people don't? People of color don't?"
Yes.
The most common voter ID is a driverâ(TM)s license, and minorities are less likely to drive. A 2007 study found that in California, New Mexico, and Washington, whites were more likely to have driverâ(TM)s licenses than nonwhites. In Orange County, Calif., about 92 percent of white voters had driverâ(TM)s licenses, compared with only 84 percent of Latino voters and 81 percent of âoeotherâ voters. A 2005 study of Wisconsin similarly found that while about 80 percent of white residents had licenses, only about half of African-American and Hispanic residents had licenses.
http://www.slate.com/articles/...
"Think about it, if getting to a government office is a problem for getting an ID, then it's a problem to get to any office for any reason. Yet people manage every day no matter what they do or how much they make."
That's a pretty ridiculous argument. If 98% of rich people manage it, and 90% of poor people manage it... you've created a bias. Nobody said 'all poor people can't get registered', only that it's a bigger obstacle that disproportionately affects them.
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
There are hundreds of people with my exact full name in the state of California. I do not know how many share a date of birth with me, but I'd be surprised if the answer was 0.
I wouldn't be surprised - sharing a birthday (Like October 31st) is trivial, sharing a birth date (October 31st, 1972) is exceptionally rare. The odds of you ever meeting someone with exactly your same birth date (mm/dd/yyyy) - ignoring their name - is extremely unusual; factor in that their name has to match also and it will likely never happen.
In the United States, there are about 10,829 births per day - and out of those 10,829 births the odds of two mothers, both named "Smith", with both deliver male children and both will name their children "John" (neither choosing "Jon" or "Johnathan") seems pretty small to me - not zero, but pretty small.
There are lots of people named "Smith" - tons of them. There are a large number of people named "John Smith" - lots of them. There are likely a fair number of people named "John Smith" with birthdays of October 31st. But do you really think there are that many people named "John Smith" that celebrate their birthdays on October 31st and are EXACTLY the same age (in other words they share a birth DATE, not just a birth DAY)?
The surname smith accounts for about 1% of the population, the first name James accounts for about 3.318% of the population, so that gives us a one out of 100 chance that a child will be have a surname of "Smith", and a 1 out of thirty chance that that child with the smith surname will have a first name of "James". I defer to statisticians to do the math.
Ah but I stated in the sentence before that that I have already encountered someone with my exact same full name and date of birth. It was not in the state of California, however. We both started physical therapy for two different injuries on the exact same day and they had to use our injury to identify which chart went with which patient, since it was our first day.
And I had to deal with DHS redress because there is someone with an Interpol warrant with my exact full name and a date of birth within just a few days of me. I was automatically flagged every time I went through immigration. So I have personal experience with the fact that such coincidences DO happen.
I've gone to a small physical therapy clinic and have ran into another patient that started physical therapy on the exact same day that I started with my exact full name and exact same date of birth. That was at just one (independent) clinic in one city.
The census bureau ranks the 100,000 most common surnames here, the 12,000 most common male first names here... Why not search the list and see just how common your first and last names are?
Same birthday (mm/dd) or birthdate (mm/dd/yyyy)? Define "exact full name", as in "spelled identically"?
Your claim is you met someone with the same first and last name (ignoring middle name, which is part of your legal name on your birth certificate and voter record, which is what we are talking about in the case of the Indiana law), and who not only shared your birthday (mm/dd), but was also born in the year as you? I find that doubtful - possible, yes, but very unlikely when birth year is considered.
The program Indiana is running considers birthdate (mm/dd/yyyy), first, last, and middle name. Ignoring name yields only about 11,000 matches nation-wide (11,000 births each day in America), weeding out by gender cuts that number in about half, THEN we can start to consider how many of those 5,000 or so young men share not only the same first but middle and last name. If we include the city of birth, the likelihood of a false match drops even further.
The first name Michael is shared by 180,000 Americans, the last name Bolton is shared by 32,000 Americans, but how many Michael Boltons have you met - ignoring birthday/birthdate?
Ken
I've gone to a small physical therapy clinic and have ran into another patient that started physical therapy on the exact same day that I started with my exact full name and exact same date of birth. That was at just one (independent) clinic in one city.
Define "exact full name", as in "spelled identically"?
Your claim is you met someone with the same first and last name (ignoring middle name, which is part of your legal name on your birth certificate and voter record, which is what we are talking about in the case of the Indiana law),
Typically "exact full name" means first, middle, last (and any other name parts you may have), spelled identically. There are hundreds of adults meeting this requirement that I've seen in the State of California based on an unclaimed property search from the State Controller's website.
and who not only shared your birthday (mm/dd), but was also born in the year as you? I find that doubtful - possible, yes, but very unlikely when birth year is considered.
You do realize that names go into and out of fashion, correct? For instance, I know someone who named a baby Noah one year and five other acquaintances used the exact same boy's name that year. I've never met any other Noah's any other year. Obviously that is a very small sample size, but pop culture has a huge influence on how common a specific name is in a given year. Obviously, pop-culture has no control over surnames. For instance, in 2015 there supposedly 20,355 girls named Emma born (Today). If they were distributed evenly throughout the year, that means that there were 55 girls named Emma born every single day. Names are typically paired based on how they sound together. So, I'd be willing to bet that there is a very short list of middle names used in conjunction with Emma. Now, that has been the most popular first name for a girl for 5 or 6 years straight. This means you've had the chance for one of those 55 girls to be given the exact same name every single day for almost 2000 days at this point.
If we include the city of birth, the likelihood of a false match drops even further.
In what state are you required to provide city or state of birth when registering? I don't recall ever providing such information when registering to vote.
The first name Michael is shared by 180,000 Americans, the last name Bolton is shared by 32,000 Americans, but how many Michael Boltons have you met - ignoring birthday/birthdate?
Why would you even consider using those two names when Bolton is one of the lowest ranking last names on your own links provided? I would consider that to be a bit disingenuous on your part. You also have to consider the fact that neither one of these people has to be born in the US to fall afoul of this program. They just have to have immigrated to the US at some point in their life.
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).
So this is a matter of faith? You believe that voter fraud is common, but have no evidence of it. Sure, out voting system is messed up, and it's very easy to sway an election, but in-person voter fraud is a pretty dumb and ineffective way to do this.
The problem with voter ID requirements is that this so closely matches the same tactics used in in the South to disenfranchise voters and maintain white control. We have an amendment to the constitution that explicitly forbids voting rights being conditioned upon payment of a poll tax or any tax. Since we have so many anti-tax folks that claim any fee is a tax, this means paying for a voter ID card at the DMV could be counted as a tax.
Indiana already has a voter ID requirement for voting that has survived a Supreme Court challenge explicitly because it was determined by the Supreme Court that there is not an undue burden to acquire a state ID in Indiana.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
So? The supreme court ruled it wasn't an "undue burden".
An 'undue burden' is a burden that is deemed unreasonably great.
That doesn't refute that its a burden, nor does it refute that the burden disproportionately affects the poor or affects people of color.
And I'm not even suggesting that the supreme court erred in judging it a reasonable burden. Frankly, I think its pretty reasonable too... but I am under no illusions that everyone can get an id with equal ease. I remember growing up and some of my friends had a miserable time getting ID while for others it was trivial.
Bank account in your own name, fixed address receiving utility bills in your name, birth certificate in hand... you can obtain / replace your ID without much trouble. But if your living with someone (all the bills in someone elses name), you don't have your birth certificate, or bank account, etc... getting ID is a royal PITA. Getting a bank account requires ID. Getting a replacement birth cert requires ID... getting a state ID requires the others.
Technically the birthday paradox does not completely apply.
If John Smith TN and John Smith NY share a birthday it does not matter to the Indiana John Smith.
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Money isn't the only consideration. If the issuing offices are open only during normal business hours, and are few in number, poor people won't generally show up. I can take time off work without penalty and drive a fair distance. Someone who's afraid of losing their job if they don't show up and doesn't have a car is in a much worse situation. Similarly, I can get whatever documentation is desired fairly easily, and poor people will find that more difficult.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I assume you're proposing that there be enough registration sessions so that anyone with a half-hour lunch break can pop on over, on foot, register, and still have time to wolf something down.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Poor people who work have drivers licenses.
Poor people who use govt services (WIC, Section 8) have IDs.
They found the time to get their ID. Poor people have no problem getting these IDs.
Statistically speaking very few (the mentally disturbed) may not have, or be able to get ID easily. That ought to be provided. The cost is minimal compared to having an electorate who distrusts the election results.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
If the finance system were intelligently run, it would be no problem at all. However, my SSAN is used as an authentication that I'm me, which is stupid. It's an identifier, and it pretty well works for that. An authenticator that can't be changed and which I have to give to a lot of people makes absolutely no sense.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
What planet is this where poor people have lots of money for luxuries? The straw planet that Republicans who don't know anybody poor like to talk about?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
And you know those individuals voting are "Illegals" how? Do you ask to see their ID's or just assume they are illegal by the color of their skin?
Jaywalking in NYC is rarely prosecuted therefore jaywalking in NYC isn't a problem.
Yeah... You're talking about "the Heritage Foundations's" lament that there are more than 1000 convictions. But notice that sums up ALL the past elections in the "last few years". In CO, the oldest is in 2005. So... 1000 convictions over a decade+ of election is... wait for it... "~an incident rate between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent". That's not convictions, that's suspicions as well. 0.0025% of the votes did not affect elections. As much as it galls me, Trump won that election because enough people in the right states voted for him.
Election tampering has happened for generations (Vote Early. Vote Often.) But you think it doesn't occur anymore?
Slavery happened for generations too. We've gotten better.
Are you concerned about who makes voting machines? How they're counted?
Yes, introducing new procedues opens the door for new vectors. As a conservative, you should be on board with this. New things are scary. Old ways are tried and true. While we are more than technically advanced enough to have online voting (or even electronic voting), the people in charge are laughably bad at technical implementations.
Then you ought to be also concerned about who votes. It's simple.
Sure. And it is federally illegal to commit that fraud and the safeguards we have against it APPEAR TO BE WORKING. In a similar fashion, planes running into each other is a serious concern, but we have a system in place to keep that from happening and so far no one is trying to get all the air-traffic controllers fired because they're killing thousands every year. Because they aren't.
Present a state issued ID in order to vote. Are you worried about poor people? Then make these IDs free.
I'd be down for that. But try to give anything away for free and the republicans will choke you out and whine a storm about how it will cost them the price of 1/8th of a new fighter jet that they could have bought with that money. And trying to standardize anything into a natitonal ID gets them screaming about state's rights. And I honestly agree with them there, it's a power play by the feds that they don't have the authority for. I'm not a huge fan of having to have papers to exist. Papers, papers please... papers. If you wanted to go full dystopian hellscape, we might as well use the off-the-books database of biometrics and facial recognition that the FBI, CIA, and NSA all have likely built up in parallel.
Many American elections in swing states are won by less than 1%.
Well even if fraud is "rare" it is happening. Remember the sill lady that said on national television that she voted for Obama six times because she got an ObamaPhone?!? These apathetic elections we've seen the last 3-4 cycles could easily be decided by a 1-2 percent tampering or busing in of fraudulent voters, etc. We need to shore up the integrity of our election process on all sides. Voter ID, registration analysis, "cyber" -- and all the disinformation campaigns that have recently erupted. There should be a penalty for deliberately spreading lies. What kind of @sshat fabricates a story and spreads it as truth. They're going way beyond misinterpreting facts nowadays.
Back to the article, if they are really deregistering people based on an imperfect algorithm without sufficient notification to allow the affected people to easily correct the situation before election time, that this is certainly unconstitutional. If true, the lawsuit will be successful.
How are they signing up for benefits then? Those aren't handed out to people without ID?!? The argument that some people are too poor to have ID is a false narrative. If true in 0.00001% of cases, then I'd be happy to personally hand the occasional person 10-20 bucks to pay for an ID.
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.
Republicans would agree on this as the cost of not trusting our elections is far, FAR higher than the cost of IDs.
The issue with expenses has to do with "what is the role of government." I am pro-choice. I am anti using tax payer money for abortions. I, personally, would write a check to help poor people get abortions as an abortion is cheaper than an unwanted child.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
No it may be detected, but when the real Darinbob shows up, all they can do is disqualify the prior vote. And provide the real person with a provisional ballot. They still cannot prosecute someone who is long gone. But those that plan such activities select voters very unlikely to actually show up. Making it even harder to catch anyone to prosecute.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
And as such every state that requires ID provides a free ID card.
But again, ID is essential to live in this world, even more so to collect the benefits those too poor to afford a small ID card fee would bee collecting every month. So your claim that it is tantamount to a poll tax disproves itself because the very poor already have the needed ID in order to get the government assistance they collect every month.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Because nobody cares. Officials encourage it, regulators oversee it and by the time it goes to trial, it's too late to affect the election.
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As has been posted on this article, statistically fewer poor people have IDs. Moreover, it's a lot easier for me to get an ID than a random poor person.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
In NYC it's almost unheard of that a poor person doesn't have an ID. No ID. No government services. Everyone has one.
I can't speak for a rural area but in the big cities it's not a problem. Even it is easier for you to get an ID, so what? IDs are needed in the modern world for so much more than simply voting. If this is such a problem then we ought to have community based outreach programs (with volunteers such as yourself) that help people get an ID.
Provide a reason for people to go and get an ID. Provide lunch. Give out gift cards. But you need to have a f**king ID to vote.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Not quite the same. I find refusal to provide the requested data to be suspicious in and of itself
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
What "excessive time investment"? It's two seconds added on to getting that driver's license you need to get for a job anyway.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
You do realize you can get a replacement card online, mailed to your house, right?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Supplying requested information is ridiculous?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Extremely difficult? It's a freakin' web form. The snail mail version is available at every post office.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I am not talking about "Acceptable" error levels. I'm talking about sampling error, which is a known and fixed quantity depending on sample size.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Your Big Mac Happy Meal costs more than photo id does in this day and age.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Last I saw, a basic social security card was available mail order.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Psst...You don't need a voter ID-valid photo ID to complete an I-9.
Funny, I do, why do you not have to?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/29/trumps-voter-fraud-commission-wants-to-know-the-voting-history-party-id-and-address-of-every-voter-in-america/
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Should have added that this was the Canadian Federal election, where our Conservative party was advised by the American Republican party how to change the voting requirements.
And no, a social insurance card (which we all have) is not good enough ID to vote. Needed current street address on the couple of acceptable pieces of ID.
After experiencing how the Conservatives screwed up the ID laws, I've gone from pro-ID to not. We've needed ID for a long time and it was never a hassle before, you used to be able to sign an affidavit if you didn't have ID and most any ID was good enough if combined with something like a bill with your address on it.
Of course having your registered name changed is a screw up no matter how good your ID is. Lots of women use their maiden name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
The truly absurd part of the argument is that at its core is a racist stereotype - that people of color are too lazy or stupid to figure out how to get to the office, so we can't risk burdening them with the need even if a photo ID is already functional necessity for everyday life. I don't buy it for a second.
I've been there. I managed. I lived below the poverty line for longer than I care to admit. Figuring out how to get to the DMV or Post Office was far from the greatest inconvenience I faced. If it's important, you find the time or you make the time. If it's absolutely necessary for living in a modern society, which a photo ID is, you absolutely make the time.
So think about what you're saying. If acquiring a photo ID is such a huge burden, then why are you only talking about it in relation to voting? Think of all the things that require a photo ID, renting anything, buying some things, entering a Federal building, boarding a plane, GETTING A JOB, cashing a check, opening a bank account, collecting government benefits, etc, etc. If having a photo ID is such a burden, all that needs to go and we need to go back to trusting people to honestly identify themselves.
Oh, and in the end the argument is sounding an awful lot like "black people are too poor, lazy and irresponsible to get an ID so let's not require them to have one", which is both total BS and actually racist.
This may well not be a problem for New York City. If the stats given are right, it's a problem in some places.
I'm fine with your take on ID. However, all the voter ID proposals I've seen in practice don't include the outreach or the free lunch. Some of them have come along with proposals to make it harder for the wrong people to get IDs. At that point, it's disenfranchising people.
I also don't see how voter IDs are going to help much. The fraud that they potentially eliminate is time-consuming and dangerous.
Remember that a voting system isn't going to be less biased than the enforcement. If the police and election officials are going to ignore fraud, having IDs will mean nothing. If the registration rolls are rigged, having IDs won't help. Assuming reasonably honest registration and enforcement, anybody voting not under their own identity is running a significant risk of facing a felony charge, and one pawn facing a felony charge can unravel all the way back to the king. Have a police officer stationed in every voting place.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
" Oh, and in the end the argument is sounding an awful lot like "black people are too poor, lazy and irresponsible to get an ID so let's not require them to have one"
Nothing of the sort.
" Think of all the things that require a photo ID, renting anything, buying some things, entering a Federal building, boarding a plane, GETTING A JOB, cashing a check, opening a bank account, collecting government benefits, etc, etc"
None of those things are required. Lots of people work for cash, or don't work for any number of reasons. How often do people enter federal building. Lots of people never fly. checks can be handled by simply signing it over to someone you trust to cash it, or maybe you already have an account from 40 years ago, etc, etc.
The point is, lots of people are getting along fine without one.
"If having a photo ID is such a burden, all that needs to go and we need to go back to trusting people to honestly identify themselves."
I didn't say that. I didn't even say that its unreasonable to have some sort of photo id... but we should recognize that its going to be a burden on people who don't have id to get it, and we should recognize that the demographics of people who don't have id aligns with racial and income demographics.
Any system we implement should pay attention that reality, and go above and beyond to ensure that people who don't have ID can get ID rather than get trapped in a Kafkaesque maze of catch-22s where they need x to get y, and y to get x etc.
You want voter id... fine figure out a method where anyone who shoes up can leave with an ID. And if you can do that without tatooing a number on everyone's forehead and wrist that would be terrific.
Funny, I do, why do you not have to?
Go take a look at what IDs are accepted under "part B". For example, a student ID is acceptable. A student ID is not accepted for voter ID in strict voter ID states.
To get a copy of my birth certificate costs $50. That is one of the multiple pieces of documentation required to get a voter ID-valid ID.
That's quite a few Big Macs. And doesn't include the cost of the ID itself, just one of the pieces of supporting documentation.
How are they signing up for benefits then? Those aren't handed out to people without ID?!?
1) Not everyone signs up for various benefits
2) The ID requirements are different. IDs that are accepted for signing up for benefits or on an I-9 form are not accepted for voter ID.
If true in 0.00001% of cases, then I'd be happy to personally hand the occasional person 10-20 bucks to pay for an ID.
To get a copy of my birth certificate online costs $80. If I can wait for a mail in form to be processed, it's $50. That's just one of the supporting documents required to get an ID that is accepted for voter ID and we've already blown your budget.
You know you can actually just go to the US voter registration website
Uh...how about providing a link to such a site. See, voter registration is on a state-by-state basis, so there isn't a "US voter registration website". There are 50 web sites for secretary of state offices.
In addition, entering an SSN at that site does jack shit when you have to present a valid ID at the polling place.
Many of the illegal immigrants that come to work actually pay taxes using a made up SSN (I've worked with and befriended illegals) as there's apparently a loophole in the system that they know how to game.
The "loophole" is the government does not prosecute employers for hiring undocumented workers. So once the employer has collected any random set of numbers on an I-9 and W-4, the employer has nothing to fear.
These people are generally less worried about being deported and more worried about crime in the "sanctuary cities" because gangs form within them and they take advantage of the fact that people are afraid to go to the police
This is about as believable as "my black friend says I'm not racist!".
First, "sanctuary city" just means the local police are not going to enforce Federal immigration law. Which means if they are in a sanctuary city they actually can go to the police without fear of deportation.
Second, if they really fear crime so much more than leaving the country, why don't they just leave the country? No more being in the shadows, and they can get away from the crime they are so terrified about.
- Buying booze
- Buying cigarettes
You realize that people selling these generally do not card people who look "old enough", right?
Also, you realize the places selling these products will accept a much wider variety of ID than are accepted as voter ID, right? For example, student IDs will generally work, but are not accepted as voter ID.
- Getting one of those terrible jobs that won't let you take time off to get an ID made
Go take a look at the instructions for the I-9 form. You will find the acceptable IDs include several that are not accepted as voter ID.
- Getting any sort of welfare benefits (food stamps, housing assistance, etc)
Again, a much wider set of IDs are accepted for this than are accepted as voter ID.
- Opening a bank account (which is necessary because no legit employers pay in cash)
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
Oh man, that's funny. Guess what? Legit employers can still give you a paper check.
See, poor people have a lot of difficulty actually getting a bank account. That's why people have been talking about "postal banking" as a solution to poor people not being able to get bank accounts.
- Cashing checks, if they get one of those jobs that still gives checks and isn't just direct deposit.
A thumbprint is not accepted as voter ID. Yet it will let you cash a check.
You mean to tell me there's a significant portion of the eligible voting population who don't do ANY of these things?
No, I'm telling you that you are living in a very comfortable bubble, where your opinion does not match reality.
"The point is, lots of people are getting along fine without one."
Except they clearly are not. They're going to greater lengths to work around not having one than would be involved in getting one, incurring greater costs and exposing themselves to greater risk. Not to mention missing out on the government benefits they, being poor, are likely entitled to.
ha, no they wouldn't agree on that at all. Half would scream "No new taxes", and half would scream "States Rights". Remember that the TEA partiers are republicans too. And "States Rights" are the only reason they gotten their last two presidents into office with less than half the vote. Good luck trying to weaken that argument.
I know it's nice to pretend that a party has it's shit in order, but there's variance. The world isn't black and white, and political parties are wide umbrellas with a bunch of different people vaguely consorting together. I mean, I doubt you're a republican with This how you differ from most republicans on other issues. Democrats have the same issue, probably worse. But hey, give it a shot. Write your rep and see how much traction you get.
I take it your parents did not keep a baby book, like everybody else in the 1950s?
Or maybe, your real problem is that you are not a citizen and should not be voting?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
It isn't that hard to get proof of your birth and being a citizen. I've kept my citizenship papers on me since I turned 16- birth certificate, SSN, and Driver's License. I got them all mail order, living more than 100 miles from the county seat. Why can't you?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Small, but nonzero, even within a single American state. Several months ago I became curious about whether the incidence of First/Middle/Last name matching exactly was more or less common than First/Last name and exact birthdate. I found myself reading an interesting analysis of "duplicate" voter records in New Jersey. From one section:
Applying the “Birthday Problem” to voter registration lists is fairly straightforward. By including the year (and thus the full birth date), the statistics change somewhat, but the threshold is still surprisingly small to many: given some reasonable assumptions about the average lifespan, the probability that at least two of 150 people have the same exact birth date – day, month, and year – is 50%. And in a group of 300 people, the probability that two share a birth date match is approximately 90%.
Imagine that our group contains all of the registered New Jersey voters with a
given first name and last name – such as all of the 417 Robert Smiths who are listed on New Jersey records as voting in 2004. The probability that at least two of these 417 individuals have the same birth date – day, month, and year – approaches 100%. The fact that two Robert Smiths with the same birthday voted in 2004 thus indicates not voter fraud, but a straightforward application of the “Birthday Problem.”
Indeed, the probabilities above likely underestimate the chance that a group of voting Robert Smiths share the same birth date, because the above calculations assume that birthdays are randomly distributed when, in fact, they are not. Certain given names are more common in certain years (it would be unsurprising to find two Jessica Smiths born on the same day in 1985, or Lisa Smiths in 1965, or Mildred Smiths in 1925). Likewise, the prevalence of surnames will fluctuate with the immigration patterns of particular ethnicities, which vary from decade to decade. Because older individuals vote at higher rates than younger people, too, we would expect a clustering of voting “Robert Smiths” weighted toward years past. Finally, birth dates themselves are not evenly distributed, as obstetricians are more likely to induce labor during the work week.