I did some analysis of vote data in Florida and found some fraud: https://enki.org/2018/12/07/finding-unusual-voters/

I'm not convinced it is large scale enough to sway an election. It's mostly just a failure of the counties to coordinate with each other to prevent double votes.

Florida has had unrestricted absentee ballot voting by mail since 2002. Over 2.5 million Florida voters used it in the last two elections, so I think the recent noise about voting by mail is just a distraction.

I do think we need better coordination across the states. I am convinced that there are people with residences in multiple states getting more than one vote. Unfortunately, not all of the states are as transparent as Florida is with the vote data.

at best, you possibly found evidence, not fraud. leave the determination to judges and juries. intent matters and due process shouldn't be circumvented.

I agree with you that I should not have used the word fraud. I was careful in writing the original post and careless with this comment on HN.

Hey, the website that you use to host your report you cite (quark.cards) has an expired certificate, and a whois shows it belongs StackFrame, just FYI since I saw you listed as working there.

I noticed the "Wikipedia's list of American supercentenarians" you cite to cross reference which describes itself as "a list of the longest lived American supercentenarians according to the GRG." [0] is not an exhaustive list of all supercentenarians. For example, the wikipedia page only lists 4 people who are currently alive, but looking at Wikipedia's underlying reference [1] there's at least 7 who are validated and currently alive, and I see around another 9 who have passed away since ~2019.

Additionally, looking at Wikipedia's underlying source [1] it says "The total number Supercentenarians that we have cited above has been frequently been misconstrued in the news media as representing every single person in the world aged 110 and over. The actual estimated number of worldwide living Supercentenarians is more likely to be between [300 - 450] persons. For the USA, we predict something like [60 - 75] Supercentenarians".

This seems like it means Wikipedia's underlying source predicts they're capturing at best ~10% of all who exist in the US.

I'm wondering if theres any census data or other sources that could help with this- guessing not since Wikipedia would likely cite that instead if it existed. Could use their extrapolation (60-75) of expected # of Supercentenarians to Florida along with the fact that Florida has an older population to just get a gut check if the # you found seems reasonable.

I find the idea and approaches looking into the voting data interesting, and I'll definitely look more into the the other reports you released when I get a chance.

> "found some fraud." As a final note, I'd just suggest that we all be super careful when levying charges like this given 1) it seems you just found some circumstantial non-peer reviewed evidence of fraud 2) how important trust is in our electoral systems to the function of open societies and 3) the vast majority of research points to voting fraud being almost non-existent.

Questioning these institutions is incredibly important and part of an open an effective democratic system, but we have to be careful and specific with what we assert and our evidence.

This is true especially now, with political factions across the US actively seeking to undermine our faith in electoral system using bad-faith and non-fact based arguments for political gain.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_supercentenar...

[1]: http://supercentenarian-research-foundation.org/TableE.aspx

I appreciate your detailed response.

I did not realize the cert had expired. I'll check that out. Thanks.

I agree with you that I should not have used the word fraud. I was careful in writing the original post and careless with this comment on HN.

Stuff like this gives me pause:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-s-la...

I don't think it's at all inconceivable that voting fraud could be a real issue.

Though I agree and then some w/ the larger issues you mention.

IMO democracy as we practice it is (quite obviously) failing us (in CA and SF anyway). The "Sortition" idea recently shared on HN sounds very promising (not that I think there's a chance in hell we'll see it tried!).

That article has nothing to do with voter fraud. All it shows is that higher turnout seems to hurt Republicans. I won't shed any tears about the demise of a political party that relies on voter suppression to stay in office.

From the article itself:

"The Democrats are creating a new, highly efficient tool to turn out voters," said Neugebauer, the GOP consultant. "If Republicans can’t find a way to match it, we’re going to lose more elections all over the country."

Oh please:

> Few people noticed when Gov. Jerry Brown signed the changes in AB1921 into law two years ago. In the past, California allowed only relatives or people living in the same household to drop off mail ballots for another voter. The new law allowed anyone, even a paid political campaign worker, to collect and return ballots — “harvesting” them, in political slang.

Is there any developed country that allows someone other than public employees to handle ballots like this?

AFAIK German law doesn't care how my filled out and double-sealed vote gets to the election office. Although I also don't see a point of why I'd hand it to some party representative when I can just drop it in a mailbox (I guess it might make sense as a service for less mobile people - who also can authorize someone to go fetch the voting materials for them), and I'd guess people just going round and ask to collect vote envelopes would cause lots of suspicion - door-to-door canvassing isn't really a thing here.

Are there widespread cases of fraudulent harvesting? Cases of harvesters telling people how to vote? Is there anything stopping Republicans and Libertarians from running ballot harvesting operations to turn out the vote in districts where they have popular support?

The most notable such case in recent US electoral history was North Carolina's 9th congressional district in 2018, where the fraudulent harvesting was perpetuated in favor of the Republican.

Why does there need to be empirical evidence of widespread cases of abuse before we address a measure that seems ripe for abuse? Was there widespread security breaches based on Spectre before operating system developers implemented mitigations?

You wouldn't shed tears over the death of the little bit of democracy remaining in America and the move to a single party political system?

That's truly sad.

Generally, in a two party system, when one party becomes unviable due to nobody particularly wanting it anymore, it either adapts (see both the Tories and Labour in the UK), or fragments and reforms (see the Liberals in the UK). Or just dies and is replaced (see the Federalist Party in the US). Political parties aren't meant to be static (and of course the US Republicans aren't, anyway, and have adapted pretty dramatically over the years, to the point that they're now unrecogniseable from a few decades ago).

It's not unviable though. President Trump won the last election. It was not by majority popular vote, but he did get like 46% of the popular vote. I doubt that will repeat itself this election, but nevertheless saying you desire the death of the voice of such a large amount of Americans is not the same as the demise of a party.

Also the claim the Republican party relies on voter suppression to stay in office is dubious at best.

I really hope the conservative party does adapt. It's really in a bad spot right now. But that is completely different than what the parent was saying.

Are you suggesting that people whose parties cannot win elections should be given wins just because it'd be a shame if those people had no voice, and then you use an example from an election where the majority of the vote received no win and no voice? What's your claim, exactly?

Why should anyone bemoan a party that goes into obscurity given a fair and accessible elections when their views are incompatible with the majority of voters? Why would anyone shed tears over this?

The party will adapt or it will be replaced.

I'm merely suggesting that advocating for a single party system in the U.S. is sad. That's it. If anything we need more political parties, not less.

I also think that if we did not have the electoral college then democrats would always win and 46% of America would lose its voice. Sure the majority gets it's way, but it's not that large of a majority and it kind of goes against the idea of giving a voice to the minority.

No-one's advocating for a single party system. As I say, if the Republicans (or Democrats) become unviable due to insufficient people wanting to buy what they're selling, that will lead to a reorientation (either the unviable party changes, or the viable party splits and absorbs part of the non-viable party, traditionally). One-party systems basically never emerge spontaneously from an existing two/multiparty system; they're usually either an early phase in a country's democratic development, or the result of some degree of totalitarianism.

> I also think that if we did not have the electoral college then democrats would always win and 46% of America would lose its voice.

If that was the case, the Republicans would have to change to be more appealing to the voters.

To take a very extreme example, in the 18th century, there were constituencies in Britain which had a population of under a hundred and elected an MP (so-called rotten boroughs), and then there was Manchester, which had a population of a few hundred thousand and didn't have an MP at all. Now, no doubt it was very unfortunate for the people in the rotten boroughs when the system was reformed and they lost their massive overrepresentation, but I don't think many would argue that it was _unfair_. And that reform did cause the Tory party in particular to have to change fairly dramatically to stay relevant. But it changed, and is still relevant today.

> it kind of goes against the idea of giving a voice to the minority

The US has two legislative houses and an executive president. The minority controls two out of the three, currently. If the electoral college was removed they'd _still_ control one out of the three (it's possible that they lose the senate this time around, but they're doing especially badly right now; they have a substantial built-in advantage in the senate and will tend to hold it).

EDIT: Also, it's not like the Republican party represents some sort of weird Borg-like monoculture who agree on everything. It only exists as a single entity because the US system is inimical to more than two parties existing. Lots of its voters aren't really represented by it anyway; they just vote for it because they dislike it less than they dislike the other side.

I don't understand why "vote harvesting" has to do with it. My understanding is that the delay is because of mail in voting. Because the votes were cast by mail, they arrive even after the election. The people who use mail in voting are the ones that due to work can't afford being in line for few hours, i.e. most of the working class.

I’m not sure how the question of whether there is fraud now bears on whether there will be fraud and opportunity for abuse if our fairly minimal voter ID laws are relaxed further. The California law allowing “ballot harvesting” is utterly wacky.

At the end of the day, why is it unreasonable to have similar voter laws to say France or Germany? Maybe you get a ballot in the mail, but you have to show up with a photo ID. This doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

So, first of all, people in Germany at least are allowed vote by post: https://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/en/bundestagswahlen/2017/inf...

Germany and France have a mandatory national ID that everyone has. European countries which _don't_ have mandatory national ID will generally accept a wide variety of things. For instance, in Ireland, we can use a bank card, a social security card, a birth cert, an employee or student ID card, and so on. Essentially everyone will have one of these.

If the US used this sort of approach I don't think there'd be so much concern. The problem comes in requiring ID which certain classes of people are likely not to have. I don't think any US state has proposed an Irish-style approach to this; most seem to want either a driving license or a purpose-designed ID.

> So, first of all, people in Germany at least are allowed vote by post: https://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/en/bundestagswahlen/2017/inf....

33 states allow by-mail voting without any specific reason (or have mail-in elections to begin with). This includes many big republican states like Georgia and Florida (with Texas being the notable exception--there, you need to certify you'll be away from your polling place on election day).

> For instance, in Ireland, we can use a bank card, a social security card, a birth cert, an employee or student ID card, and so on. Essentially everyone will have one of these.

> The problem comes in requiring ID which certain classes of people are likely not to have. I don't think any US state has proposed an Irish-style approach to this; most seem to want either a driving license or a purpose-designed ID.

You misperceive where the battle lines actually are in the US: https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/voter-.... No state requires a "driving license or purpose-designed ID for voting.

14 states, including most of the largest ones, require no documentation whatsoever. Here in Maryland, I voted by walking down to the fire station, writing my address on a ballot, and signing it. These states are significantly more permissive than Ireland.

The next batch of states requires some form of ID, or other documentation, but usually you can vote anyway by providing identifying information and signing an affidavit. In Texas, for example, you need some sort of photo ID, and if you don't have one, you sign a declaration saying you don't have one. These is about as permissive as Ireland. Maybe a bit more permissive, because you can usually still vote even if you don't have an official ID.

Only 7 states have a "strict" voter ID law. These just require some form of photo ID. All but Wisconsin allows you to vote and then come back 3-5 days alter with your photo ID. This sounds roughly comparable to Ireland, maybe a bit more restrictive insofar as you need a photo ID (employee or student ID card) as opposed to a non-photo ID (bank card).

When you hear people in the U.S. talk about voter ID laws being used for "voter suppression" those people want all the state laws to be like Maryland, where there is zero verification. Ireland's laws would get lumped in with those of evil Republican states like Texas. Likewise, when you hear about "voter purges" for the most part they're talking about any attempt to maintain an accurate list of who is registered to vote (in a country where it's not mandatory to update your address with the local government).

In LA and California, the voter rolls have 112-114% as many people as the number of eligible voters in the county: https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-releases/judicial-watch-.... According to those counties, they classify those voters into "active" and "inactive" lists, but in fact people on either list can still show up and cast a ballot and have it counted. When states like Georgia try to remove voters from the rolls that didn't respond to multiple notices sent to their home address, or haven't voted in many years, people call that "voter suppression."

> When states like Georgia try to remove voters from the rolls that didn't respond to multiple notices sent to their home address, or haven't voted in many years, people call that "voter suppression."

Removing people from voter rolls should require making active efforts to determine if there is a change in voter status. For example, are they still filing taxes at the same address? The most common cause of stale voter roll information is people moving, and the voter database not reflecting it, but there are already several government databases that will reflect whether or not someone has moved. Purging voters simply because of nonresponse and non-voting should be insufficient burden of proof--and yet states have tried to do that in the past.

It's actually quite frustrating how many different government agencies I have to inform of my move [1], especially because there's very little indication of who will and who won't be told of it.

[1] The title registration of my car and my driver's license not using the same database is particularly frustrating because it was the same damn agency.

That's exactly what they do.

https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/here...

> The notices are generated after the state compares the list of people who submitted a change of address form to the U.S. Postal Service with the state’s overall list of registered voters.

> Voters who receive them are asked to fill out the form and return them to their local county elections office. The notice says a voter will be declared “inactive” if they don’t respond within 30 days. Several advocacy groups including the ACLU of Georgia, however, say not all voters should face that consequence.

https://www.npr.org/2019/12/20/790319853/are-states-purging-...

> Now, in Wisconsin, it's a whole different case. It's the state that wants to wait until after the 2020 elections to remove some 234,000 voters who appear to have moved. They want to wait because they've run into problems in the past using Division of Motor Vehicle change of address records to clean up their lists.

A big difference is that photo IDs in those countries are consistent and free, and in the case of Germany compulsory. US state IDs are all over the place in terms of issuing requirements and ease of obtainment, and there are in practice a lot of people that don’t have them (on the order of 10% of voting-age citizens).

If vote by mail is secure enough for Utah, Oregon, and citizens over the age of 65, it's secure enough for everyone.

Not to mention our military.

All of Colorado, as well.

>Voter id laws disenfranchise more people than fraudulently vote.

A lot of people in the US are very much opposed to voter id but many western countries have it? Why is the US the only country where people seem to claim it disenfranchises people?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_Identification_laws

IIRC it has to do with how easy/hard it is to get said ID. The claim is that IDs in the US are much more difficult to get for some demographics than others due to time/monetary costs and/or the difficulty of acquiring the required documents, so requiring an ID to vote would mean that otherwise eligible voters may be prevented from voting.

Some other countries have a nationally issued ID that citizens are given for little or no cost. In those cases, voter ID laws would be much less controversial. I don't know whether this is the case for all countries where voter ID laws are not controversial.

Just to be clear, I am in favor of free id cards and requiring an id card (either the free one or a driver's license) if you want to vote.

Voter ID laws would still be controversial in the US because people would say that poor people would not be able to make it to the place where they can pick up their id card. Poor people are less likely to have a vehicle and are more likely to work multiple jobs causing them to work past closing time at the DMV or wherever they would get the ID.

The other issue is that it is not actually clear if voter id laws actually cause people to not be able to vote. https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/3/15/14909764/study-vote...

It's because the US doesn't have a national ID system and a significant fraction of the population doesn't have an ID and can't get one easily.

This isn't even a secret or anything, GOP operatives openly admit that the purpose of these voter ID laws is to suppress minority voters: https://www.thedailybeast.com/republicans-admit-voter-id-law...

The thing I heard that is most laughable is that he has voted via mail! He is "allowed to" but no one else is because fraud.

I don't believe the concept of "voting by mail" is at question. It's the method of getting the ballots into individuals' hands. Sounds like you're referring to absentee ballots where someone registers in advanced for an absentee ballot and has it sent to them. _I believe_, in this case, vote by mail ballots are sent to currently registered voters by default. That means there are a flood of official ballots, meant for an individual, that are sitting in mailboxes, being sent to deceased people or people that have moved districts, etc. Those ballots can be filled in by someone else and can be intercepted to prevent counting.

That's how I understand the situation to be.

I can't speak about other states, but in California (particularly Los Angeles) to get ballot in mail you need to request it (there's an option to request permanent vote by mail, but still most people don't do that, I suppose the pandemic will change that).

All the mail in ballots require a signature which is typically verified against the signature in DMV or one you provided during registration.

Sometimes the ballots are rejected because it doesn't match. You can actually check online if your vote was counted.

If you decide to cast a vote in person and you received ballot by mail, you can surrender your mail ballot too get in person one. If you don't provide one, you can cast a provisional one, which will be counted only of they don't receive mail in ballot, if they do you also will be in trouble.

John Olivier also had response [1] about voter fraud.

[1] https://youtu.be/l-nEHkgm_Gk?t=10m8s

Voting by party line should be removed from ballots. This actually encourages partisanship versus having voters lookup and understand the candidates they are voting for.

My SO and I are registered NPA. Sucks because we're blocked from voting in the primaries, but I'd rather not be associated with any single party.

One way we prepare for voting is we take the sample ballot and spend as many evenings (after the littles are asleep) as we can researching, individually, everything and every one on the ballot. We then discuss. We then fill out our sample ballot to take with us. Note, we do not vote the same. That's not the point. The point is to have a discussion and to help each other understand as much about what is on the ballot as we possibly can.

Breaking up the 2 party duopoly would be good too. I have no idea how.

Ranked choice voting would be a good start.

RCV is a fantastic idea, but it is very difficult to get it installed on a large scale. Only one state has tried (Maine) but their state Constitution as currently worded seems to disallow it (as their Supreme Court has warned them). So for many states you'd first have to amend the Constitution to allow for RCV (or go for broke and try to get RCV enshrined in your Constitution) and then hope that those who benefited from the previous First-Past-the-Post systems will act against their interest to implement it by law or will refrain from enacting laws to overturn a citizen's referendum (which is my home state of Utah's preferred way of invalidating all citizen referendum). That said, while it's not a perfect solution it leans so heavily towards resolving many existing issues that I've long decided that if any politician publicly supports it as part of their campaign they'll have my vote.

Progressive Democrats and Never Trump Republicans need to vacate their respective parties. No idea how you and I could effect that change though -- awkward thing about "democracy", we only get the choices presented to us by those in power.

The US electoral system (or at least the common one; one or two states have flirted with modernising it) makes more than two parties unviable. In general countries without proportional representation or similar are two party systems (or occasionally 2.5 party systems like the UK, for historical reasons), countries with PR are multiparty.

Yeah that would be a great start. Sorry state of affairs in Canada and the US is that even when politicians run on a platform of election reform, they change their tune because the system worked for them. The excuse I hear most often is some form of the electorate being too stupid to navigate such a complicated system.

The _fairest_ PR systems actually are very complicated, which is why they're rarely used in practice. Systems like PR-STV, though, are both a lot fairer than first past the post, and relatively understandable (in countries that use them, most people understand the basic mechanics, and _everyone_ understands them well enough to use them correctly, even if the subtleties are lost on most people).

My vote is held hostage by the Democratic party. I'm reluctant to expound upon that because that will invite a partisan pile-on and I've had enough of that here.

People complaining about NSA abuse should not be taken seriously.

If you cared about privacy, NSA abuse is not where you would start. Its a fraction of a percent compared to the fingerprinting and cookie tracking that happens in the open.

The NSA abuses may be a problem, but its minuscule to the tracking commercial surveillance on the internet itself.

wry_discontent says >"Voter fraud might be a problem, but it's minuscule compared to fraud of the elections themselves."<

What do you mean by "fraud of the elections themselves"?

I think he explained what he meant by the previous paragraph.

There's no proven fraud in voter id laws, gerrymandering or "regular closing of the polls{sic]":

- Voter id laws are necessary. Nearly every democratic nation in the world uses voter id laws:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+many+nations+use+voter+id+laws...

-gerrymandering is commonplace. Both Republicans and Democrats do it:

https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-gerrymandering-4057603

There is no clear possible political solution to gerrymandering. When Democrats get control of state legislatures they gerrymander to their benefit; when Republicans get control they do the same.

or

- regular closing of the polls. Polls must close early enough so that the vote can be counted and go in. The hours are rarely if ever extraordinary.