VOTER FRAUD

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So, yeah tight stuff politically. And some people hate Trump enough they don't want him in power next time, even if it means cheating I guess. So, Florida was close and they demanded a "recount".



Guy unloading boxes from a truck.



Two women hauling prewritten ballots for "recount" using "absentee ballots." Uhhm-hmmm.



Someone caught them doing this on tape.

Russian hackers? Meet actual voter fraud.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Some of you are far whatever you won't even react about this. But nobody, liberal or conservative, should pull this stuff. Clean race or it shouldn't count.
Some sketchy video of god-knows what's going on is grounds for alarm (The recorder even says repeatedly "I don't know what's going on here"), but shit like moving polling places outside the city, 1km from the nearest bus stop is A-okay.
You also don't seem to have a problem with American Indians being thrown off the voter rolls because a recent law requires them to have a residential address (they live on a reserve).
Georgia's electoral system outright rejected abensentee ballots in the name of purging the rolls of dead people, an action which could have been done any time, but was initiated shortly before a critical election.
That's just the tip of the iceberg. Nevermind the smaller scale bullshit with power failures taking voting machines down, too few machines causing absurdly long lines, paper ballots affected by humidity being shelved overnight, calibration issues on touch-screens, and ballot shortages galore.

Voter fraud is a chimera. It doesn't exist. The idea that someone votes in one riding, then drives to another riding and uses fake ID to vote there too is not only preposterous, but it would have a negligible effect.
Vote fraud is very real, and that's generally what's going on when voters are turned away or rejected.
pianotm
The TM is for Totally Magical.
32347
Dyhalto
Vote fraud is very real, and that's generally what's going on when voters are turned away or rejected.


And this is exactly what gerrymandering is. Redistricting so that one party can't win no matter how overwhelmingly they vote because no district exists where they have a physical majority in the population.
@Dyhalto
From what I've heard, Broward county routinely pulls this stuff. Florida was also the state of "hanging chads" a few years back. Voter fraud very much is a thing. Whether we call it voter fraud or vote fraud.

Do not make generalizations about what I am and am not okay with. That amounts to stereotyping. "This person must be a white male, against blacks and women, and agree down the line with everything I think this person is." Actually, until about 2015 I tended to swing moderate and not vote at all. I was torn cuz I was pro-making money and law and order, but also LGBT and for the environment. Then I saw how "environment" sometimes meant "seizing property because of stag beetles" or "making laws taxing heat and air" and that liberals basically didn't have LGBT people's back when they get murdered by other minorities. I am still LGBT and pro-the actual environment, and I'm politically moderate, but I am jaded about my former political alliances.

So what is this telling me that I am automatically against American Indians because of that? I have a beef with people falsifying their address, not getting denied based on having no address. Homeless people have no address, yet they can claim they live in one city (somehow). Ah, here it is. Homeless people can vote by using the location of the place they sleep as an address. No problem with that. Although it does tend to make things harder.

But what you say obscures a certain truth. You see, American Indians are only sorta citizens. They have many of the same rights as Americans but their state government actually falls under the Bureau of Indian Affairs rather than state government. In other words, they are almost separate nations. The states have legit denied them vote rights on and off because it is unclear whether they are citizens or wards of the state. More on this here. And no, I'd be okay with them voting within their reservations. I wouldn't be okay with them moving two cities away or two states away to stack the vote in certain directions. What I'm talking about with voter fraud.

"Voter suppression" is not voter fraud. Absentee ballots are often used to fix the vote by not requiring one meet face to face with the voting personnel, leading to ballot fraud. In Virginia, even absentee requires you to show up in advance, show ID and fill out the paperwork. The common line is "those poor people can't manage to get driver's licenses! Their votes won't count." Actually, that's BS. There are nondriver licenses. There are even poor ppl licenses which are free (usually these require alot of stuff like over 62 and on fixed income). Without voter ID, people have been known to register as dead people. Not to mention people who aren't citizens voting. But yeah, vote suppression.

https://ballotpedia.org/Dead_people_voting

As to something about 1 km away from a bus stop.

A healthy person can walk 6 km per hour, or make it there in 10 minutes. If you want to assert your right to vote, I think you can get off your ass and walk maybe five or ten blocks. My legs aren't what they used to be, but if my vote made a big difference, I'd walk at least that far. As it is, despite my state going from purple to blue,

The Constitution rules any live citizen (person of any race, person of any sex, and 18 or older) can vote. When you take away ID and other means of checking because "some people might not have those" what happens is vote fraud. If you don't follow simple rules, you probably should be rejected.

There are three or four types of vote fraud:
  • Outright misreporting numbers (also, numerical hacking)
  • Social engineering (supposedly what happened with "Russian hacking" and what actually happened when Facebook and others suppressed alt news, allowing ppl not to talk honestly to others and creating information distortion)
  • Ballot fraud (this, not the guy driving to multiple locations is a bigger reason why IDs are key. Without checking IDs it would be possible for people to come in and dump a bunch of completed ballots with randomly generated names which is probably what happened here)
  • Illegal voters (when you aren't a US citizen, and have not been naturalized, this is the second reason ID is key, it prevents 50,000,000 people from coming in and voting the way the EU wants)
  • Voter fraud (this is the one you mentioned, which usually is not a biggie unless you and a couple of buddies play this game)
  • Gerrymandering (screwing with the way districts work, in Virginia where I live, the map looks mostly red but for the last few elections, it has been "blue" through screwed up district stacking)

Virginia map. We're a "blue state". What, you can't see all the blue there? Gerrymandering something fierce.



Notice what is not on the list. "Voter suppression." Follow the rules, and unless you're an American Indian (mumble mumble), you will get to vote. No ID, no vote. What I will admit is that the process of identification should be free. What I won't admit is that we should loosen the standards. You need to be registered and to have valid identification.

You're either woefully naive or outright in favor of this sorta takeover. If the latter, let me give you some advice. What typically happens when extreme leftism takes over. People die, including the people backing the movement. Anyone in favor of their own rights, should not favor any system that takes the rights of others, for they never know when they too will stop being useful and become the new oppressed.

Here's an object lesson of good vs bad government, and yes this is accurate, though clearly hyperbole and somewhat humorous.


Also, Bravely Second is awesum.
ESBY
extreme disappointment
1238
can someone help me parse what i just read
It's not often we're both on the same page, esby, but this time I'm with you.
SunflowerGames
The most beautiful user on RMN!
13323

Washington was right about political parties, they're tearing apart your country. I can't imagine that the founding fathers of your country could have imagined what is going on right now.
ESBY
extreme disappointment
1238
author=kory_toombs
I can't imagine that the founding fathers of your country could have imagined what is going on right now.

they'd probably be very disappointed that women and non-whites could vote
Well... I think that's probably not true. They were ppl of their time. Jefferson had a female slave, who he freed on his death, and some movies and such depict her as being a kinda chocolate sweetheart, so to speak. Adams had a kinda equal romance with his wife, and sent her even political letters (they were huge saps).

People here mistake me for a conservative. I'm something much different. I think the US ought to be United only in the sense that public services (roads, electricity, and our military) be part of one government. In terms of laws and management of the country, we wouldn't be in this mess if (1) slavery had been abolished, but (2) the right to secede from the Union had been granted. Sorta, I'll get to that.

Here's how an election should work. Hillary wins Massachusetts and Virginia, Trump wins Pennsylvania and Texas. Hillary becomes President of these states. I move to Penns (actually, the tolls, ummm Texas). No hard feelings, if you like Hillary, move to those states, they have have things basically run like Portlandia. If not you move.

We shouldn't be trying to rig things. We shouldn't be having awkward Thanksgiving cuz ppl have become so they see ppl as evil for their political beliefs. The USA should be United not by forcing ppl to come to unwanted decisions but by allowing people space.
It must have been a lot easier when everyone was a subject of his/her majesty of england.
Yeah, I dunno about that either. Seems like the colonials in the US didn't much care for it (most of the first 10 Amendments were sorta a "what not to do" cuz UK did all those things to them).

Search and Seizure, for instance. "The Crown wants your weapons. And your house. And a cool million out of you would be nice too." Good times.
author=ESBY
can someone help me parse what i just read
do people still bother reading bulmabriefs posts?
it still blows my mind that the USA doesn't have a non-partisan body in charge of elections. Canada has Elections Canada. The rest of the democratic world has figured it out. My take is that there is a lot of false pride in "American Exceptionalism" that collectively blinds them to potentially better alternatives to systems they came up with themselves.
I, too, took a 100-level polisci class in college.
lol I actually took religious studies. I skipped it a lot to hang out with a cute girl though. I learned a lot about human nature that semester.
author=Darken
do people still bother reading bulmabriefs posts?

I think there is an ignore button somewhere on my page.

author=kentona
it still blows my mind that the USA doesn't have a non-partisan body in charge of elections. Canada has Elections Canada. The rest of the democratic world has figured it out. My take is that there is a lot of false pride in "American Exceptionalism" that collectively blinds them to potentially better alternatives to systems they came up with themselves.

Americans do things their own way. It's part of how we are, because we inherently distrust things that "everyone is doing." There is an actual expression, "if everyone said they were jumping off a brdige would you do it?" I'm also skeptical of just how non-partisan this can be. So yeah, thanks but no thanks.

We'd be better off having Senate and House races use totally different systems, like Senate is the majority of districts being red or blue (with zones being by geography, not population) while House is by popular vote, Supreme Court wholly appointed by each president (no interference from House/Senate), and the president voted in by a another method. The method? Well...

I was reading from some strange political theorist about something called demarchy. Essentially, all Americans, I dunno about Canada or other countries, but we get a wonderful thing called jury duty. Basically, they get a selected mix of what they want for jury members and they see if there's any disqualifiers to objectivity. Basically, you'd random pick a group of voters to represent the country. Some doctors, some plumbers and other blue-collar professionals, some utilities (food/electrictiy/roads) guys, some internet startup types, some straight up poor people. Basically, a cross-section of very diverse groups. And those people could vote on the president based on how he did in terms of speeches and what he promised.

What I would also like to see is a stronger referendum system, where direct votes on issues was more a thing. The US is a pay-per-view style country, I could totally see people voting on "should taxes be raised to build an irrigation system south of town" on channel 261, and using a remote to say yes/no.

Americans do things their own way. It's part of how we are, because we inherently distrust things that "everyone is doing." There is an actual expression, "if everyone said they were jumping off a brdige would you do it?" I'm also skeptical of just how non-partisan this can be. So yeah, thanks but no thanks.

like I said, there is a lot of false pride in "American Exceptionalism" that collectively blinds them to potentially better alternatives to systems they came up with themselves.
I like representative democracy because it means I don't have to do the work, the person I voted for has to go through books worth of documents to get proper insight into what is happening.

Most of my family has been in local elections, none of them got voted in but most of them got a seat at a side-comittee thingie. Which meant that aside from their regular job they also regularly had to go through a bunch of documents in order to pass various proposals over to the city council.

The problem with direct democracy is that everyone would technically have to go through all of these bunches of documents and study them closely and whatnot, which, obviously, they wouldn't do.

Mobs are idiots for a reason, if one or two of a mob of fifty have knowledge about a subject and the rest just listen to whatever someone says. The 48 who have no idea what they're talking about are going to get to decide.

Of course this is idealist thinking. I like realpolitik and "career politicians" because I like to think that they at least should know something. Of course, there's always the occasional celebrity candidate or whatever who might not know shit. And of course there's loads of agendas to push on all sides. But overall I know the people I've elected to parliament or to city council or to Europe know a hell of a lot more about the particulars of every issue than I do. And I wouldn't call myself terribly uninformed.


TLDR Direct democracy is a pretty awful idea.
Direct democracy yeah that's true. But two of the things that I see wrong with representative democracy is that you don't get a real sense that your vote helps shape policy (when you help write a referendum you see something turn into a potential law to be voted on, whereas legislative typically does nothing about the spotty roads in the area they vote on new taxes), and there isn't a sense that you can be ever sure whether you just elected some corrupt liar who will take all your money.

Yes, there is the whole pages and pages of books thing. But like I say for another thread I'm a firm believer in trial and error having designed games with feature creep and finding later the features didn't always work together. Even the most book-phobic citizen can be trusted to take a look at that pipe vote they refused, and say "well, I voted no because we don't want taxes but ummm now our pipes are kinda cracked and spewing water all over my lawn. Perhaps it's time to write to the governor and ask whether he could redo the vote." Sometimes the best experience is direct experience. After all, how did those books get written? Someone screwed up.

I'm less interested in my politicians being stupid. Stupid you can educate. It's... evil that's harder. Like, with direct democracy you vote for Obamacare or something, you suddenly realize your particular group is expected to pay $400/month when you work on a minimum wage job. With representative democracy, the feeling always is that you're trusting someone who isn't family or friends to not hurt you. They could easily devise a tax that doesn't apply to elected officials because the money goes to the state.

Yeah, I don't favor mobs either. But I'd still favor people from my town voting ways I don't agree with but totally understand, because every now and then, the established way that I know as say a plumber doesn't represent portions of unorthodox knowledge (like how to gerryrig a toilet so it burns trash). And every now and then, probably rarer, you can convince people in the mob that they're wrong. Okay, maybe not.
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