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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
 Posted - 10/27/2012 : 17:13:57
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http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/10/27/gop-rigging-elections-for-romney/
This one is interesting, if only because it seems like a new take on the e-vote fraud thing.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 10/29/2012 : 20:56:48 [Permalink]
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I find this confusing. Leaving aside the whole "why not go to the press with this" bit, I don't get the argument.
It says| You do not go to the polls and “unvote” for one or more candidates to take votes away from them; you vote for a single candidate, your vote is added to the total they have already received, and their votes increase. Vote counts should either hold steady or go up. When vote counts go down, it indicates fraud. |
But the charts just seem to show percentages. If you count 20% of the precincts, and the voting is 19 for me and 1 for Mr. X, then fine. And then if you get to 40% of the precincts and it's 20 for me and 20 for Mr. X, then my cumulative percent of the vote total has gone down, right? From 95% to just 50%. And if we get to 60% of precincts and the total is still 20 for me, but 40 votes for Mr. X, then the cumulative percent of the vote total is 33% to 66%. And so on. This doesn't show fraud, though.
Or what am I missing? |
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Hawks
SFN Regular
Canada
1383 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2012 : 01:24:22 [Permalink]
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The quote that Cune highlighted is indeed weird and irrelevant to the analysis performed, but then I can`t find anything like it in the original report.
I`m wondering why the analysis only shows data from 11 of the states when it claims that it performed it on all 50. The report does say that it had `precinct-level data` for these 11 states but then says that they get `flat results in different states` (which I took to mean states other than the 11). Seems iffy, but then I only did a quick glance. |
METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL
It's a small, off-duty czechoslovakian traffic warden! |
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Valiant Dancer
Forum Goalie
USA
4826 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2012 : 06:23:46 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Cuneiformist
I find this confusing. Leaving aside the whole "why not go to the press with this" bit, I don't get the argument.
It says| You do not go to the polls and “unvote” for one or more candidates to take votes away from them; you vote for a single candidate, your vote is added to the total they have already received, and their votes increase. Vote counts should either hold steady or go up. When vote counts go down, it indicates fraud. |
But the charts just seem to show percentages. If you count 20% of the precincts, and the voting is 19 for me and 1 for Mr. X, then fine. And then if you get to 40% of the precincts and it's 20 for me and 20 for Mr. X, then my cumulative percent of the vote total has gone down, right? From 95% to just 50%. And if we get to 60% of precincts and the total is still 20 for me, but 40 votes for Mr. X, then the cumulative percent of the vote total is 33% to 66%. And so on. This doesn't show fraud, though.
Or what am I missing?
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I think they misunderstand the whole precinct thing.
It is common for Chicago to finish up and since they ahve the infrastructure, they report first. Illinois shows up heavily Democratic. Then the rural counties where the poll workers have to drive long distances to report vote totals come in and the percentages for Democratic candidates (for state wide offices) drop precipitously as the heavily Republican districts come in.
Now, the voter fraud I heard about during the Bush-Gore election was that the machines showed up with a negative vote tally preloaded as a starting point in some heavily democratic districts. |
Cthulhu/Asmodeus when you're tired of voting for the lesser of two evils
Brother Cutlass of Reasoned Discussion |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2012 : 07:09:07 [Permalink]
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From the AddictingInfo piece:This lucky candidate is always a Republican. Who'd a thunk that the "lucky candidate" in Republican primaries would be a Republican?To show how the manipulation works, here is a sample of the Ohio primary breakdown:- In Mercer County, a total of 383 people voted in the Republican primary. Of those, 42% voted for Santorum, while 30% voted for Romney.
- In Highland County, 5,590 people voted, 39% for Santorum and 31% for Romney.
- Now examine the results from larger Ashtabula County, with its 8,932 voter turnout: it shows that Santorum suddenly dropped to 35% while Romney’s votes climbed to 33%.
- In the largest, Montgomery County, with its 56,283 voter turnout, Romney’s vote tally suddenly zoomed up to 38%, and Santorum’s tally dropped to a distant 31%.
The "dropped" and "zoomed" language demonstrates the flaw in this analysis: the author(s) (all of them) clearly assume that the percentage of people voting for each candidate should be more-or-less identical in every county in Ohio. They're assuming that if Santorum got 42% of the vote in Mercer County, then he should also get 42% of the vote in Montgomery County. In still other words, they're assuming that the vote counts in each county are not independent.
They're simply ignoring the fact that Republicans in urban areas are going to have different motivations for voting than Republicans in rural areas. The UK Progressive article says that that particular concern doesn't matter:[Choquette] examined and applied all of the normal statistical markers to see where a variance might occur: income level, population density, race, urban vs. rural, even party registration numbers. He found no correlation to explain why Romney votes trended upward while Paul and Santorum votes trended downward -yet only in large precincts. But are there rural precincts with large population? How can there not be a trend between population density and urbanness? But then we get this:If percentages did not change from one precinct to the next, we would see a flat line, but what we are seeing is sloped lines downward for Democrats and upward for Republicans (or, in the case of the Presidential primary, upward for Romney and downward for his opponents), said Duniho. And there's the assumption in all its glory: that the percentage of people voting for candidate X should not change "from one precinct to the next." The assumption is that as goes the smallest county, so should go the state. The mind boggles.
Those making this assumption are essentially saying that we're wasting tons of time and money, because if the percentages should remain flat, then we need only count the votes of a tiny group of voters, and assume that all voters for a particular office will vote the same way. If 42% of voters in tiny Mercer County, Ohio, voted for Santorum, then 42% of all Ohioans would have voted for Santorum (so the assumption goes), and therefore 42% of all Americans would have voted for Santorum in all Republican primaries.
If the assumption were correct, why bother allowing everyone to vote, and forcing every single voting district in every single county in every state to hire poll workers and print ballots? Why not just randomly select the smallest statistically representative sampling of eligible voters for each office that needs someone elected to it, count their votes and be done with it? Hell, the selection could be made before the election season begins, and we could sequester the sampled voters, and the candidates could campaign just for them via closed-circuit TV, saving billions of dollars in advertising costs!
...
On a completely different note, these analyses appear to assume that all voting is done via electronic voting machines. Is that even true? Is it even true for just the larger counties in the U.S.? |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2012 : 08:17:13 [Permalink]
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| The analysis might be off or completely wrong, but I seem to recall that the exit polling and the results were way out of alignment in Ohio in the 2004 election. Makes me kind of worried. |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Valiant Dancer
Forum Goalie
USA
4826 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2012 : 09:19:19 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
From the AddictingInfo piece:This lucky candidate is always a Republican. Who'd a thunk that the "lucky candidate" in Republican primaries would be a Republican?To show how the manipulation works, here is a sample of the Ohio primary breakdown:- In Mercer County, a total of 383 people voted in the Republican primary. Of those, 42% voted for Santorum, while 30% voted for Romney.
- In Highland County, 5,590 people voted, 39% for Santorum and 31% for Romney.
- Now examine the results from larger Ashtabula County, with its 8,932 voter turnout: it shows that Santorum suddenly dropped to 35% while Romney’s votes climbed to 33%.
- In the largest, Montgomery County, with its 56,283 voter turnout, Romney’s vote tally suddenly zoomed up to 38%, and Santorum’s tally dropped to a distant 31%.
The "dropped" and "zoomed" language demonstrates the flaw in this analysis: the author(s) (all of them) clearly assume that the percentage of people voting for each candidate should be more-or-less identical in every county in Ohio. They're assuming that if Santorum got 42% of the vote in Mercer County, then he should also get 42% of the vote in Montgomery County. In still other words, they're assuming that the vote counts in each county are not independent.
They're simply ignoring the fact that Republicans in urban areas are going to have different motivations for voting than Republicans in rural areas. The UK Progressive article says that that particular concern doesn't matter:[Choquette] examined and applied all of the normal statistical markers to see where a variance might occur: income level, population density, race, urban vs. rural, even party registration numbers. He found no correlation to explain why Romney votes trended upward while Paul and Santorum votes trended downward -yet only in large precincts. But are there rural precincts with large population? How can there not be a trend between population density and urbanness? But then we get this:If percentages did not change from one precinct to the next, we would see a flat line, but what we are seeing is sloped lines downward for Democrats and upward for Republicans (or, in the case of the Presidential primary, upward for Romney and downward for his opponents), said Duniho. And there's the assumption in all its glory: that the percentage of people voting for candidate X should not change "from one precinct to the next." The assumption is that as goes the smallest county, so should go the state. The mind boggles.
Those making this assumption are essentially saying that we're wasting tons of time and money, because if the percentages should remain flat, then we need only count the votes of a tiny group of voters, and assume that all voters for a particular office will vote the same way. If 42% of voters in tiny Mercer County, Ohio, voted for Santorum, then 42% of all Ohioans would have voted for Santorum (so the assumption goes), and therefore 42% of all Americans would have voted for Santorum in all Republican primaries.
If the assumption were correct, why bother allowing everyone to vote, and forcing every single voting district in every single county in every state to hire poll workers and print ballots? Why not just randomly select the smallest statistically representative sampling of eligible voters for each office that needs someone elected to it, count their votes and be done with it? Hell, the selection could be made before the election season begins, and we could sequester the sampled voters, and the candidates could campaign just for them via closed-circuit TV, saving billions of dollars in advertising costs!
...
On a completely different note, these analyses appear to assume that all voting is done via electronic voting machines. Is that even true? Is it even true for just the larger counties in the U.S.?
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The state is responsible for procuring equipment. Some states leave it up to the individual counties, but most see value in a single input stream/volume discounts. In Illinois, there is a choice between a touch screen (which i don't use because i don't trust the goddamned things) and a paper ballot that then gets put through a scanner and electronically tallied. (An audit is possible with these things, so i don't mind it). Both use the same format for vote tallies. The results are taken on memory sticks by poll workers to the county seat and read into machines there which then tallies up the votes from all precincts and send running totals electronically to the state board of elections.
I'm betting the authors of this site are die hard supporters of Santorum (aka the Religious Right). More 9-1-1 truther type stuff here. Showing complete ignorance of distribution and core value issues. Religious Right votes on social issues. Your mainstream voter tends to pick economic issues. Then you have your special interests like womens issues, minority religion issues, and those who are looking for a role model for elected office. (Bill Clinton was a womanizing man-whore, but I and the economy prospered very well under his 8 years.)
This group seems to be saying, my guy didn't win, therefore, you cheated. Sour grapes at best.
You have voters saying "His economic plans are great, but he says stupid crap about <issue> so I can't think of voting for him/her even though the economy needs the full attention of the government".
Yes, I'm going to vote for Gary Johnson because he is at least focused on the economy and Constitutional rights. Yes, he says stupid crap about abortion, but he also says he does not expect to be focusing on social issues for the 4 years after election. |
Cthulhu/Asmodeus when you're tired of voting for the lesser of two evils
Brother Cutlass of Reasoned Discussion |
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Hawks
SFN Regular
Canada
1383 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2012 : 12:56:03 [Permalink]
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On top of what Dave W. said, it also seems like the hypothesis were tested backwards in the sense that they started with some data and then fitted the data to one of the many possible hypotheses considered. The type of fraud the article thinks it has found appears to be vote-flipping (towards republican candidates) and the larger the district, the larger the proportion of votes are being flipped (this makes sense, they say, since it is easier to discover fraud in smaller districts). They might be right, but using such a shotgun approach to forming one`s hypotheses, one is bound to find that the data collected supports at least one of them.
Why should one not consider a more mundane hypothesis, such as:
For the states shown, the larger the district, the more Romney-friendly it is because more money is spent (by Romney) campaining in larger districts? |
METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL
It's a small, off-duty czechoslovakian traffic warden! |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2012 : 13:03:21 [Permalink]
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| Ya know, if they had arranged the precincts from largest to smallest (instead of smallest to largest), they would have been accusing Republicans of stealing votes from Romney to give to Santorum in a failed voter-fraud scheme. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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the_ignored
SFN Addict
2562 Posts |
Posted - 10/31/2012 : 17:18:24 [Permalink]
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| For a real issue of voter fraud, you may want to check this out. |
>From: enuffenuff@fastmail.fm
(excerpt follows):
> I'm looking to teach these two bastards a lesson they'll never forget.
> Personal visit by mates of mine. No violence, just a wee little chat.
>
> **** has also committed more crimes than you can count with his
> incitement of hatred against a religion. That law came in about 2007
> much to ****'s ignorance. That is fact and his writing will become well
> know as well as him becoming a publicly known icon of hatred.
>
> Good luck with that fuckwit. And Reynold, fucking run, and don't stop.
> Disappear would be best as it was you who dared to attack me on my
> illness knowing nothing of the cause. You disgust me and you are top of
> the list boy. Again, no violence. Just regular reminders of who's there
> and visits to see you are behaving. Nothing scary in reality. But I'd
> still disappear if I was you.
What brought that on? this. Original posting here.
Another example of this guy's lunacy here. |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 10/31/2012 : 19:21:07 [Permalink]
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I don't have a head for numbers, but I figured if this guy really had clear, unambiguous, mathematical proof of election fraud then I wouldn't have to be reading about it on some obscure conspiracy website. It would be front page news.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
| Edited by - H. Humbert on 10/31/2012 19:21:52 |
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energyscholar
New Member
USA
39 Posts |
Posted - 11/17/2012 : 12:30:42 [Permalink]
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Hey all- This is my first post, besides my intro. Here's a real claim of electoral fraud, and related story. We don't know whether it is true. Summary of claim: Karl Rove, head campaigner and dirty tricks guy for the Romney campaign, had a system in place to tamper with election results in Ohio, Virginia, and Florida. Supposedly an organized group of hackers calling themselves The Protectors, probably related to Anonymous, hacked Rove's system, blocking his access to the system after polls closed.
http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=35708&sid=1cd76111052fe6be8460bd4b88a63664
Purportedly, this is the reason for Rove's infamous meltdown on Fox TV.
My first thought on this is that it's a wombat-crazy conspiracy theory. My second thought is that it's also quite plausible, and fits the MO of some high level hackers I have known. I'm one (a computer security expert) myself, although I had nothing to do with this.
Opinions?
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"It is Easier to get Forgiveness than Permission" - Rear Admiral Grace Hopper |
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energyscholar
New Member
USA
39 Posts |
Posted - 11/17/2012 : 15:01:57 [Permalink]
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I must respectfully disagree with your assertion that clear, unambiguous evidence of electoral fraud would be front page news. I know several examples of clear, unambiguous evidence of extreme malfeasance by highly placed figures that are never front page news.
The most blatant example is probably the Plame Affair. For those who don't remember the details, here they are.
In George W. Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech the President spoke these infamous 16 words, “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa .”
Joe Wilson was the US Ambassador to Nigeria, and his wife, Valerie Plame, was an undercover CIA agent working on nuclear weapon proliferation issues. Joe Wilson had personally investigated claims, initially exposed by MI6, about Iraq trying to buy Yellowcake Uranium from Nigeria. Joe Wilson had personally verified that these claims were false, and determined that the claims were based upon forged documents. Wilson and Plame had, in 2002, submitted a report to the CIA that conclusively demonstrated that the 'Negerian yellowcake uranium' story was fraudulent. It is also noteworthy that they retained copies of these documents.
Joe Wilson actually was in favor of a US invasion of Iraq, because he personally knew Saddam and believed that Iraq had WMDs. However, Wilson did NOT believe in basing the invasion on lies, when the truth was probably sufficient. Joe Wilson decided to become a whistleblower, and to publicize the fact that President Bush had lied to the American people about the reason for going to war.
Wilson managed to write one OpEd in the NY times. He was expecting it to be picked up by the media, and had unambiguous evidence that the CIA knew the Negerian Uranian story was fraudulent. They were prepared to provide documents to the press. Instead, the story was suppressed, V. Plame's identity as an undercover CIA agent was deliberately compromised by Karl Rove, and Wilson & Plame were forced to flee Washington and go underground. They approached many other media sources, including NY Times, BBC, Der Spiegel, and even Tokyo Times. No media source would touch it. Unambiguous evidence that the US president had lied to the public about the reasons for war was simply too hot a topic to touch.
Wilson and Plame approached foreign intelligence services and the hacker underground, looking for help. No one could get the story out. I know this because V. Plame visited my home in the Spring of 2004, to discuss the topic with my associates.
The Plame affair was the straw that broke the camel's back, because it proved conclusively that the media system was more thoroughly broken than was previously understood. A whistle blower simply COULD NOT get a hot story published to the public. This caused certain people to start the Wikileaks project. I was on the periphery of this project from 2003 through 2006. I ceased to be involved the same week that Julian Assange registered the Wikileaks domain.
H. Humbert, I would like to suggest that unambiguous evidence of election fraud in the USA is just as hot a topic as unambiguous evidence that the US President has lied to the public about the reasons for war. No media outlet will touch it. That's why you can only read about it in 'conspiracy theory' web sites.
Regards,
Energyscholar
P.s. I don't know whether or not this story about election fraud is TRUE, I only know that, if it IS true, no media outlet will touch it.
P.P.s. The same goes for the closely related story by The Protectors, which I also posted. I doubt any 'official' media will touch it. Even were they to pass their evidence to the FBI, I doubt highly that the FBI would touch it. It's too politicized.
Originally posted by H. Humbert
I don't have a head for numbers, but I figured if this guy really had clear, unambiguous, mathematical proof of election fraud then I wouldn't have to be reading about it on some obscure conspiracy website. It would be front page news.
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"It is Easier to get Forgiveness than Permission" - Rear Admiral Grace Hopper |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 11/17/2012 : 22:39:18 [Permalink]
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With respect, energyscholar, I'm not sure we are talking about the same thing. Election fraud generally means that someone is manipulation in a direct way an election. Examples include voting two (or more) times, or voting in a district that you don't belong to. It could even involve hacking a computer system to change a vote tally.
The example you note isn't the same thing. |
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energyscholar
New Member
USA
39 Posts |
Posted - 11/18/2012 : 01:35:36 [Permalink]
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I was not commenting on the hypothetical electoral fraud issue. I was commenting on the supposition that anything that important would be on the news, not on a little read internet message board. I gave an example of information that was/is actively censored and/or obfuscated in popular media. Revelations about election fraud might be such a censored topic, even to the innocent, as it calls into question the legitimacy of governments.
I also wish to suggest that the above story about election fraud
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/10/27/gop-rigging-elections-for-romney/ (repeat from above)
may have motivated 'the protectors' to infiltrate and defeat K.R.'s electoral manipulation strategy with 'The Great Oz' per this story
http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=35708&sid=1cd76111052fe6be8460bd4b88a63664 (also repeat from above)
If it really happened, of which I have no direct evidence one way or the other.
Energyscholar
Originally posted by Cuneiformist
With respect, energyscholar, I'm not sure we are talking about the same thing. Election fraud generally means that someone is manipulation in a direct way an election. Examples include voting two (or more) times, or voting in a district that you don't belong to. It could even involve hacking a computer system to change a vote tally.
The example you note isn't the same thing.
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"It is Easier to get Forgiveness than Permission" - Rear Admiral Grace Hopper |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 11/18/2012 : 11:16:31 [Permalink]
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But the Plame scandal was covered by the mainstream news, so I'm still not sure how it makes a good example. True, few people were held accountable. Maybe it wasn't given the attention you felt it deserved. But it was covered. Scooter Libby even faced trial. It was national news.
That's not the same as being unable to find a single credible news source covering a supposedly earth-shaking story, as we have in this case.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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Election conspiracy
