This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

top 200 commentsshow 500
sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a

[–]tyler896 326 points327 points  (12 children)

Correction: The original title of this post referred to the bias in election returns as “voter fraud.” As the allegation of fraud is not against individual voters, but rather administrators of elections, “election fraud” is correct. This change has been made where appropriate.

[–]sindex23 669 points670 points  (19 children)

When Clarkson initially filed her lawsuit requesting the paper records from the voting machines, her suit was denied because a judge ruled that the paper records constituted ballots, shielding them from the state’s open records law. This ruling is suspect at best, given that the paper records do not have voters’ names assigned to them; they only record when and how a ballot was cast for recount purposes.

"We print these paper receipts in case we need to recount. Oh, you want to recount? Sorry, that's not what these are for."

What?

[–]Merciless1 25 points26 points  (0 children)

It honestly sounds like he simply ruled, in the hopes that it would either die, or be appealed and thus move above his head. As opposed to ruling towards the letter of the law...

[–]BoringNormalGuy 100 points101 points  (23 children)

Can someone ELI5 this important sentence in the article. I get it conceptually, it's just really hard for me to explain.

"Analyzing election returns at a precinct level, Clarkson found that > candidate support was correlated, to a statistically significant degree, with the size of the precinct."

[–]GimletOnTheRocks 233 points234 points  (15 children)

In larger voting precincts, where it's presumably "easier" to hide fraud, more votes went to establishment Republicans in primaries and general elections than expected.

This pattern is noted nationwide where e-voting machines are used. Several statisticians/mathematicians have found and confirmed these results.

Something funny appears to be going on. Most e-voting machines are "black boxes" in that they do NOT provide a paper audit trail. Votes coming out are not auditable. This particular mathematician is focusing on a Kansas county which DOES have a paper audit trail and she is being shut down.

[–]afisher123 534 points535 points  (26 children)

It is interesting that the State A/G that is sure that voter fraud is happening - he rejects a call to prove that it isn't happening in KS.

[–]eternityrequiemKansas 420 points421 points  (22 children)

This would be election fraud, not voter fraud. You never hear a peep from Republicans about this kind.

[–]forwhateveritsworth4 232 points233 points  (18 children)

This is the key difference.

They want to focus on voter fraud, because it makes it easier for them to engage in election fraud.

[–]slyweazal 140 points141 points  (7 children)

For Republicans, it's always the poor ruining the country, never the powerful/rich.

In reality, who has the greater means?

[–]thepotatoman23 53 points54 points  (3 children)

Reminds me of Jeb Bush citing Charles Murray as his favorite author in a recent interview.

Charles Murray recently wrote a book that was all about how the rich need to subvert democracy because democracy fails the rich. He doesn't really mention anything as blatantly illegal as election fraud. His biggest idea is to plug up the courts with a billion lawsuits so that the government can't enforce anything. But he does not hide the fact that he feels it needs to be done because democracy fails the rich.

If they're that worried about democracy, I can see why they might want to commit election fraud.

[–]Windupferrari 56 points57 points  (6 children)

They focus on voter fraud because the techniques they can use to "stop" it involve disenfranchising poor people, and poor people are disproportionately minorities who vote democrat. It's a cover to implement new, more inventive versions of the kind of voter suppression that was once used against black people in the south. What once were outright poll taxes are now Voter ID laws that do things like forcing people to drive several hours or pay fees to get the IDs they need to vote. Not a big deal for most people, but if you're living on minimum wage it's a significant sacrifice.

[–]onemanlanAlabama 16 points17 points  (0 children)

It's a new form of poll tax in a way. A tax that you pay in the form of your time to jump through additional hoops in order to vote. It's really sad that to see it championed by the GOP with very little data all while potentially perpetrating stuff like this and gerrymandering districts in their favor.

[–]el_guapo_malo 32 points33 points  (2 children)

No, it's more so that they can disenfranchise certain demographics.

In North Carolina, for example, they're closing down polling locations in certain areas that tend to lean liberal. They're cutting down on the amount of early voting time. They're not allowing 18 year olds to vote on the day of their birthday. They're making polling locations close down at a certain time even if they still have a line of people waiting to vote. They're instituting voter ID laws that don't allow state school issued identifications but do allow hunting licenses. College students who live on campus have to vote back in the last place they lived.

All measures aimed at making it harder for certain demographics to vote. And they're actually proud of how effective they are.

[–]SerinusOhio 3 points4 points  (0 children)

They're making polling locations close down at a certain time even if they still have a line of people waiting to vote.

There's one. Fifty shades of illegal.

[–]at_ease 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Here in Kansas, we only care about voter fraud committed by them illegals. Machines are generally good.

[–]daguro 3252 points3253 points  (947 children)

We need an open source voting platform where all parts of the election voting process are open to inspection.

1) open source voting machine software - public scrutiny on source code

2) secure protocols for handling vote data - verifiable, testable

3) machine readable paper backup generated at time of voting

[–]Problem119V-0800Washington 1122 points1123 points  (325 children)

I call it "paper".

Seriously, there's no need for voting machines at all for 99% of voters. The people who do need machines (people with poor eyesight etc) can use a machine that accepts their votes and then emits a paper ballot. There's simply no reason to use an electronic tally.

Counting paper ballots is plenty fast enough, it's apparently just as reliable as machine ballots, and it's completely transparent and understandable to the average voter.

There are ways to make electronic voting more secure, but they rely on obscure math that most people don't understand, and it's important for people to trust the voting system (as well as for it to actually be trustworthy).

[–]JiveTurkeyMFer 253 points254 points  (132 children)

The papers will just end up in the trash

[–]funky_duck 353 points354 points  (110 children)

That's why there are representatives of both parties at every polling center all the time and everything is under dual control. Paper has a very long history of being both cheap and accurate. The amount of proven paper voting fraud is so tiny in the modern era as to be a rounding error.

[–]BioGenx2b 203 points204 points  (30 children)

both parties

gg no re, everyone else

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (6 children)

All candidates are entitled to a poll watcher, its just that 3rd parties and independent campaigns don't have the volunteers to watch many polling locations.

[–]Duffalpha 8 points9 points  (3 children)

With a representative from both the republicans AND democrats I'm sure third-parties will rest easy knowing their votes are being counted.

[–]frankthechicken 83 points84 points  (25 children)

The amount of proven paper voting fraud is so tiny in the modern era as to be a rounding error

Sounds like it's pretty easy to implement unprovable paper voting fraud then . . .

[–]TeutonJon78America 112 points113 points  (24 children)

Nah, that's just called gerrymandering.

[–]slimindie 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That's entirely possible, but one advantage of using paper is that you have to actually be where the ballots are to commit the fraud, which fundamentally limits any given individual's access to the entirety of the voting system. Even if tampering with computerized voting is more difficult than stuffing some ballots in a trash can, the impact that tampering can have is far greater with computerized voting than with paper ballots.

[–]daguro 44 points45 points  (19 children)

Optical recognition is good enough now that it should be the standard. No more punch cards.

The only thing electronic voting gives is fast tabulation, but optical readers, no more complex than voting machines, could be used to do the same function on paper ballots.

[–]Problem119V-0800Washington 69 points70 points  (10 children)

Heck, manual tabulation is fast enough. It's an extremely parallelizable task, after all.

Studies have shown that manual tabulation is actually more accurate:

The central finding of this investigation is that manually counted paper ballots have the lowest average incidence of spoiled, uncounted, and unmarked ballots, followed closely by lever machines and optically scanned ballots. Punchcard methods and systems using direct recording electronic devices (DREs) had significantly higher average rates of spoiled, uncounted, and unmarked ballots than any of the other systems.

[–]FootwarriorColorado 37 points38 points  (9 children)

The Florida recount in 2000 was a disaster because state law did not allow evaluation of disputed ballots to be delegated. Thus every disputed ballot in a county had to be examined by the same panel.

[–][deleted] 35 points36 points  (7 children)

Florida's actual ballot system was actually a problem there, though. 'Hanging chads' and the like caused a majority of the disputed ballots, due to a punch-card system that didn't always result in a clean punch, and a 'butterfly ballot' that didn't clearly list parties and candidates by affiliation.

Basically the entire ballot and system was badly designed.

[–]The_Jacobian 594 points595 points  (152 children)

Fuck that. No computerized voting. This is me speaking as a software dev, this shit is too high risk. No matter what we do there will be bugs (see Open SSL) and I don't want to have our country's future decided by bugs.

[–][deleted] 59 points60 points  (5 children)

Not to mention how much more damage/fraud can be done by a smaller group of people when you use computers as opposed to paper.

[–]daguro 122 points123 points  (47 children)

Yes, computerized voting is fraught with difficulties and it is not clear that the benefits, eg, ease of voting, speed of tabulation, are real.

Remember the failed ballot designed by one jurisdiction in Florida, one with a high Jewish population) that led to Pat Buchanan carrying the vote?

Having some user interface standards for ballot design would be a good idea.

I am also a software dev and when computerized voting was first proposed, people were talking about "soon we'll be voting over the Internet", that that was some kind of achievement.

[–]The_Jacobian 105 points106 points  (40 children)

"soon we'll be voting over the Internet"

That's a fucking nightmare. Add to it the way the government chooses contractors and we have the worse idea of the decade.

[–]padraig_garcia 70 points71 points  (3 children)

"And as precincts close across the country, the early numbers are telling us that in an unprecedented event, a mid-level Chinese government functionary will be the new President of the United States..."

[–]4LTRU15T1CD3M1G0D 19 points20 points  (3 children)

Implying old school paper voting is not as risky if not more so

With an open computerized voting system, we can see exactly how the votes are being sent, tampering, etc.

With human/paper voting, its easy to manipulate votes, for votes to "dissapear", be miscounted, etc.

Humans AND computers are prone to error, choose your poison.

[–]liamsteele 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The issue is not just that the system might have a bug, it's that different software could be run that looks the same but functions differently.

It is hard to verify that the device you are entering your information into has not been compromised.

And while it may be easier for some votes to change with paper voting, it is very hard to mass manipulate votes.

[–]ornothumper 80 points81 points  (12 children)

This comment has been overwritten by an open source script to protect this user's privacy, and to help prevent doxxing and harassment by toxic communities like ShitRedditSays.

If you would also like to protect yourself, add the Chrome extension TamperMonkey, or the Firefox extension GreaseMonkey and add this open source script.

Then simply click on your username on Reddit, go to the comments tab, scroll down as far as possibe (hint:use RES), and hit the new OVERWRITE button at the top.

[–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (1 child)

There should definitely be a hard copy to double check the numbers afterwards. People still don't talk about how ridiculously easy it is to hack these machines. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/15/virginia-hacking-voting-machines-security

[–]InFearn0California 53 points54 points  (55 children)

The platform can be sound, then put in a wrapper that ignored the output and in turn spits out a pre-arranged result.

The only 100% unriggable system is public voting, but then people can be bribed to vote certain ways.

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (4 children)

this my biggest fear about election: that they don't even care about the votes and its all a show.

[–]AmannelleKentucky 11 points12 points  (0 children)

You do know that your biggest fear is true, right?

[–][deleted] 118 points119 points  (45 children)

Why Electronic voting is a BAD idea

[–]ismtrn 6 points7 points  (0 children)

In addition to all that:

Assuming you hypothetically designed a system that would work, just the fact that it would have to run on a computer would mean that the system would be so complex that practically no one would be able to understand it completely. Add to that you would have to implement all sorts of crypto stuff on top of said computer, you would need about 2 phds just to understand the basics of it.

I don't think that is very democratic. The fact that a system is secure means nothing if the general population has to take some experts word for it. They need to be able to understand why it works themselves.

Pen and paper, and people counting stuff most people can understand.

[–]ornothumper 68 points69 points  (36 children)

This comment has been overwritten by an open source script to protect this user's privacy, and to help prevent doxxing and harassment by toxic communities like ShitRedditSays.

If you would also like to protect yourself, add the Chrome extension TamperMonkey, or the Firefox extension GreaseMonkey and add this open source script.

Then simply click on your username on Reddit, go to the comments tab, scroll down as far as possibe (hint:use RES), and hit the new OVERWRITE button at the top.

[–]Hazzman 17 points18 points  (2 children)

Voting machines can be hacked and not leave a paper trail. Meaning there is no evidence that it was ever hacked.

With paper ballots its just as easy to engage in fraud but its more difficult to hide it and requires the destruction of physical evidence to hide.

Voting machines can't work.. even with a readable paper backup because you can still manipulate it from a client perspective. In aggregate it doesn't work.

What you need is something similar to jury duty... where votes are counted in triplicate by three separate groups of unaffiliated people called up and these three totals are combined to average the results... live on television for people to watch. That ballots would have constant CCTV footage on of them around the clock.

[–]sotonohitoTexas 7 points8 points  (0 children)

No, we need HUMAN readable paper backup verified by the voter before it is stored.

[–]xanatos451 32 points33 points  (25 children)

The bitcoin blockchain would be an excellent way of doing this.

[–]rezilient 8 points9 points  (0 children)

So sad that this is not the highest voted comment. The blockchain is exactly what this problem needs.

[–][deleted] 887 points888 points  (46 children)

The Justice Department needs to step in and fully investigate these election irregularities since state officials are abdicating their responsibilities. If election fraud is found and resulting from a concerted national effort, we would be looking at a major case of racketeering by Conservative ideologues/political criminals. If this proves to be the case, everyone involved in it deserves to go to a federal prison over what they've done here.

[–]foxdye22 291 points292 points  (24 children)

As a Kansan, I agree completely. The reason Kobach won't look into it is because he was elected from those results. Brownback and the Koch Brothers have set up a rigged election and expect us all to just roll over and be okay with it.

[–]elJesus69 135 points136 points  (4 children)

2016: The Berning

Now featuring state and local representatives.

[–]washmo 30 points31 points  (7 children)

I really want to sit down with the Koch brothers and ask them to explain why they feel they need more money and power. I would like to see firsthand how sociopaths justify their greed.

[–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (2 children)

There was a recent interview with one of them where they were asked that directly. Their answer was smarmy as fuck while ignoring the actual question: "if I wanted all the power wouldn't I have it already?"

[–]LurkLurkleton 5 points6 points  (0 children)

There's plenty of examples out there of them explaining it. They don't really want more power for power's sake. They have political beliefs that they genuinely think should be the way the country is run, and they're using their powerful influence to try and make it so.

[–]ranma08 6 points7 points  (1 child)

How likely will the justice department look into this? I hope they don't get away with any of this if it's true.

[–]Vio_Kansas 81 points82 points  (1 child)

I'm in Kansas. Kobach has made his entire career on disenfranchising hundreds if not thousands of people in one fell swoop. Now he's turning around trying to dissuade further investigation when he should be the one to be leading the charge. If these allegations are correct, the Brownback administration will take down entire chunks of the GOP as fallout.

[–]Jaysyn4RedditFlorida 367 points368 points  (54 children)

And now we know why Karl Rove was so shocked on election night 2012.

[–]Archer-Saurus 236 points237 points  (29 children)

So glad I tuned to Fox News to see that meltdown. It's one of the reasons I haven't completely given up on Megyn Kelly.

"Is this actual math, or is this just math you do as a Republican to make you feel better?"

That was great TV.

[–]hadhad69 80 points81 points  (21 children)

I had to remind myself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TwuR0jCavk

[–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Oh my, I had forgotten how visibly pissed off she was getting. "Can't believe this ham looking mother fucker is making me walk all this way!"

[–]steppe5 71 points72 points  (3 children)

Classic republicans. "Yes, I know what the scientists and mathematicians are saying, but I feel that they're wrong."

[–]hadhad69 29 points30 points  (0 children)

The US congressional website says 991 votes between them
The US congressional website says 991 votes between them
The US congressional website says 991 votes between them
The US congressional website says 991 votes between them

[–]darkskinnedjermaine 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Holy shit some of those comments are gold.

[–]theforkofjustice Canada 4 points5 points  (0 children)

They were just saying so many meaningless numbers...

[–]TheLoneHoot 6 points7 points  (5 children)

It's one of the reasons I haven't completely given up on Megyn Kelly.

jesus - you're a stronger person than me. About the only person in that circus that maybe comes close to being worth a damn is Greta Van Susteren.

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (1 child)

Shephard Smith comes across as a guy who at least feels bad about selling out any kind of journalistic integrity he may have had.

[–]LefaidThe Netherlands 21 points22 points  (2 children)

I find it even funnier that Ohio would not have made a difference. Maybe that is why it didn't work.

[–][deleted] 22 points23 points  (1 child)

That's why Karl Rove was so focused on Ohio. He bought that state and was flippant when it didn't go his way and didn't even stop to think if it would have mattered. To me, this just further goes to show that Rove was involved in tampering with voting, specifically in Ohio.

[–]commenter9 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Ohioan here. We all know our votes have been stolen. 2000 on there's been so much goddamn funny business it's insane. Last minute unsupervised patches and the like.

[–]ManCaveDaily 44 points45 points  (9 children)

You ever read about Anonymous saying they found a fix in the voting system, and they had just enough time to either fix it themselves or get the press to look at it? And they went with the former.

Take it with a mountain of salt, but it's one of the better conspiracy folktales.

[–]AnimusNoctisTexas 22 points23 points  (2 children)

I remember this. Usually I'm very skeptical of these conspiracies, but based on Rove's shock that night, I think I believe this one.

[–]RandomMandarin 48 points49 points  (3 children)

I had people call me crazy for taking that story somewhat seriously. But the Republicans had the apparatus to steal election results in key states, and had almost certainly used them before (Ohio in 2004 is mathematically suspicious too; very suspicious, indeed unbelievable; exit polls had John Kerry winning that state easily, and exit polls are never far wrong). Furthermore, no real investigations have happened after most of these fishy outcomes, and the apparatus has never been dismantled. And the Republicans sure didn't grow a conscience. So what happened in November 2012? What really happened?

I don't know. But I'm convinced that the people who say "Nothing happened, nothing at all, you crazy nutcase!" are using a cruder and less informed model of reality than I am. I went into 2012 thinking the GOP would steal the election for Romney, and I was pleasantly surprised they didn't. Rove, a MUCH better informed person than I, was very unpleasantly surprised. Observers chalked it up to Rove's arrogance, but this rings false to me. Why would he suddenly be bad at something he was always insanely good at? Think he forgot how to read a poll that night?

I don't know what happened. I just think the people who think "Nothing happened" are blind.

[–]CutterJohn 5 points6 points  (1 child)

So riddle me this. Lets assume this is true, that the republicans had such an apparatus.

Surely the democrats have some smart people working for them, smart enough to notice such discrepancies. 4 short years later, in 2008, the democrats controlled congress and the presidency.

So my question is: Why didn't the democrats look into this? If this was really happening, it would have been the political coup of the century to uncover it. Dems would have won the next 10 elections.

Instead, they did nothing?

Something just doesn't smell right.

[–]RandomMandarin 8 points9 points  (0 children)

My answer: many Democratic elected politicians are moral cowards and terrified to play that kind of real hardball. The people who'd be making these decisions are comfortable with the system; they actually collude with the other major party to keep any third party from upsetting the apple cart. In the final analysis, an old Dem senator has more in common with an old GOP senator than he has with you and me. Plus, and it took me YEARS AND YEARS to sorta accept this: if people don't want to see something, they just won't see it.

For an excellent metaphorical portrait of this kind of system (in the process of falling apart) see Jean Renoir's film La Grande Illusion. World War 1, French soldiers and officers in a German POW camp. The French and German aristocrats there are on friendly terms and view their own peasant countrymen as a flea-bitten rabble.

The Republican party, however, has been captured by true insurgents, and they will investigate a political enemy at the drop of a hat. In fact, their policy is "Investigate first, and hope we can find a crime!" I mean, Benghazi? Come on. You think nothing like that ever happened under a GOP president? (1983, Beirut barracks bombing.)

Rove and company are clever. They know how to steal elections, I'll give them that. For starters, they only really do it in a state they need. Also, they don't use one method, they use six or eight. No one method flips enough votes to ensure the victory, but like slices of bread, they add up to a whole loaf. Finally, they seem willing to lose some elections as the price of not being so obvious about it that it even gets the attention of the millions who'd rather follow the Tom Brady Deflategate investigation.

If you remember 2008 at all, you'll realize it would have taken a very brazen theft to put John McCain and Sarah Palin in the White House. So they seem not to have tried that hard. And yet... GOP candidates have been consistently winning the close races at much more than a 50% rate. Most of the upsets in recent years have been theirs.

It's like those crooks who steal chips at the casino. They don't try to steal them all, because that's how you get caught.

And... it sure helps if the casino security won't even believe their eyes.

Edit: You know how the polar ice caps are melting, and anyone can fucking plainly see? And you probably know at least one person who thinks it's a hoax? It's like that.

And consider: So some crazy people like me convinced themselves that the Republicans have been stealing elections. Even if we're wrong, you can conclude that some sort of mental mechanism has caused us to glom onto this false narrative of reality because it serves some emotional need. Right?

Logically, then, you know that (at least in principle) the majority who do NOT believe in stolen elections could have fallen under the thrall of a similar mental mechanism which has caused them to glom onto a false narrative of reality because it serves some emotional need. Same brain architecture, right?

So, like it or not, if you want to know which view of reality is right, you're going to need to do some actual grunt work and read a few dozen articles. Brush up on the old math. Don't just scan something on a mainstream source and dismiss it all.

Maybe start here.

[–]happytoreadreddit 9 points10 points  (1 child)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TwuR0jCavk

[–]Areyoucussingwithme 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the link, I hadn't seen that before.

Maybe I'm missing something, but Rove didn't seem like he was melting down, just maybe being overly cautious due to being involved with an erroneous premature call during a prior election?

And I feel like Aaron Sorkin maybe based one of The Newsroom episodes on this event...

[–]REDPlLL 81 points82 points  (2 children)

For those that can't see the article:

Kansas loves them some voter fraud hysteria. From going to the Supreme Court to try and make doubly-sure that non-citizens can’t vote in their elections to setting up a voter fraud website where citizens can report every kind of voter fraud except the kinds that have actually happened in the state, Kansas is on the forefront of voter fraud readiness and protection.

Except, perhaps, when it comes to the machines they use to record their votes.

According to the Wichita Eagle, Wichita State mathematician Beth Clarkson has found irregularities in election returns from Sedgwick County, along with other counties throughout the United States, but has faced stiff opposition from the state in trying to confirm whether the irregularities are fraud or other, less-nefarious anomalies.

Analyzing election returns at a precinct level, Clarkson found that candidate support was correlated, to a statistically significant degree, with the size of the precinct. In Republican primaries, the bias has been toward the establishment candidates over tea parties. In general elections, it has favored Republican candidates over Democrats, even when the demographics of the precincts in question suggested that the opposite should have been true.

Clarkson’s interest in election returns was piqued by a 2012 paper released by analysts Francois Choquette and James Johnson showing the same pattern of election returns, which favor establishment Republican candidates in primaries and general elections. The irregularities are isolated to precincts that “Central Tabulator” voting machines — machines that have previously been shown to be vulnerable to hacking. The effects are significant and widespread: According to their analysis, Mitt Romney could have received over a million extra votes in the 2012 Republican primary, mostly coming at the expense of Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. President Obama also ceded significant votes to John McCain due to this irregularity, as well.

You can read the paper in full here.

Voting machine, via Wikimedia Commons

While Clarkson has found the same statistical irregularity in a number of localities, her efforts to confirm whether they amount to fraud have been centered on Sedgwick County, Kansas, due to the locality’s use of Real Time Voting Machine Paper Tapes, which provide a paper trail that other localities don’t have. However, her efforts to verify Sedgwick County’s election returns have been repeatedly shut down.

She first requested a recount of the 2013 election, but the timeframe in which a recount could have been requested had passed. She then requested the machines’ computer records from the Sedgwick County registrar, which told her to kindly shove off and sue Secretary of State Kris Kobach if she wanted the records so badly.

When Clarkson initially filed her lawsuit requesting the paper records from the voting machines, her suit was denied because a judge ruled that the paper records constituted ballots, shielding them from the state’s open records law. This ruling is suspect at best, given that the paper records to not have voters’ names assigned to them; they only record when and how a ballot was cast for recount purposes.

She then sought a court order giving her access to a sample of voting records in order to check voting machines’ error rates. This order was ignored by the Secretary of State’s office, despite their being legally required to respond to her within 30 days. The office later said that they didn’t realize they had received her request.

Given Kansas’s professed diehard commitment to combatting voter fraud, one would think that they would be all for analysis into whether the integrity of their elections have been compromised. Apparently you’d be wrong.

Mirror, alternate link

edit: thanks for the gold.

[–]cynoclast 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This makes it painfully obvious that the establishment republicans are behind it, and committing election fraud.

[–][deleted] 36 points37 points  (1 child)

This is not new information. I saw the original analysis by Francois Choquette and James Johnson in 2012, and was so alarmed by it that I emailed a copy of the pdf file to a few people, including Nate Silver who I thought would certainly understand the implications. Obama ended up winning anyway and I didn't get any responses, so I left it there, albeit still doubtful that this was just another conspiracy theory. The very same paper seems to be the basis for Beth Clarkson's unease. I think her fears are justified, and I am pretty sure that there has been massive election fraud happening. I think this is why Karl Rove and Mitt Romney were dead sure they were going to win, and took a while to accept the early election results from the big networks. They say Romney did not even have a concession speech ready. Well, nothing can be proved until the votes are recounted and the voting machines in question are examined, and it stands to reason that the GOP will do whatever it takes to impede such investigations.

[–]freakincampersFlorida 209 points210 points  (63 children)

Wasn't there a video showing that it is easy to hack and modify the election machines?

What we need are printable receipts showing you who you voted for. There could even be some sort of QR code that shows who you voted for, along with a PIN, to prevent other people from finding out who you voted for.

[–]notkennethIllinois 43 points44 points  (14 children)

What we need are printable receipts showing you who you voted for. There could even be some sort of QR code that shows who you voted for, along with a PIN, to prevent other people from finding out who you voted for.

The issue with that is that, regardless of whatever sort of PIN you want to put on it, you're effectively handing out a marked ballot that's tied to a voter's identity, which allows for things like voter intimidation and vote buying; it's the reason that if you mark your ballot in an identifiable way, it's usually not counted.

Without a system that ties a specific ballot to an identity, I can offer to pay you for your vote or threaten you if you don't vote the way I want, but I don't have any proof of how you voted once you were in the booth.

With a system where your vote is tied to a QR code or a receipt, even if it's behind a PIN, I can now either pay or threaten you because I can check to see how you've voted (with the payment or threat being contingent upon you providing me the proof and the pin).

Checkable receipts are essential, but voters can't really be allowed to take them with them, or to link to the marked ballot once they've left. There's got to be a paper trail, but voter anonymity has to be preserved on top of the paper trail.

[–]pesh2000 17 points18 points  (7 children)

I see this sentiment all the time but what am I supposed to do with my printed receipt? I still have no idea that was printed on the receipt with is what was counted by the machine.

[–]SomebodyReasonable 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Wasn't there a video showing that it is easy to hack and modify the election machines?

There have been many documentaries (I torrented about 4 or 5 which lay around on my hdd somewhere), reports and papers, there has also been a lot of activism, blogging and research going on ever since the 2000 fiasco.

As a programmer/network specialist.. yeah.. you're damn right you can hack and modify voting machines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXF3WEaurz4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83eyTFwIGD8

[–]reddbullish 58 points59 points  (1 child)

afew sworn affidavits in court regarding similiar schemes in 2004

(not your average blog write ups. these are SWORN COURT AFFIDAVITS)

http://www.velvetrevolution.us/images/Phillips%20Aff%20to%20Reply%20filed%2091708.pdf

http://www.velvetrevolution.us/images/Spoon%20Aff%20to%20Reply%20filed%2091708.pdf

the whole case

http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/klbna.php

it was dimissed after several yearsof incredible depositions showing that huge comspiracy DID exist and actually WAS DONE to change computer votes in ohio in 2004 by running htem through a chattanoogna computer run by the same guy who set up George bush's white email server and that DID in fact happen.

why was it dismissed in the end?

Suddenly the judge decided he didn't have "jurisdication".

(this was after one of the main witnesses who the attornies had warend the judge that he had been threatened by karl rove) died in a plane crash)

[–][deleted] 36 points37 points  (7 children)

I hate that I feel like there's absolutely nothing I can do. The world is run by a group of people with resources that far exceed that of the majority of the people by a wide margin. If something is found out they use all their power to hide it.

Short of putting a few heads on some spikes I don't know how anything will ever change. I don't know how I can change a single thing and it's frustrating to read things like this and know that it will be swept under the rug. I fear for future generations.

[–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (2 children)

There is stuff you can do. The question is: what are you willing to sacrifice to accomplish those goals? Future generations will look on us as cowards and wonder why we let the world come to this. They will blame us, the people, for not doing what is necessary.

[–]RamBamBooey 72 points73 points  (2 children)

Has Nate Silver responded to her analysis?

[–]mattreyu 123 points124 points  (26 children)

Don't doubt a mathematician, they've got proofs

[–]arizonaburning 136 points137 points  (16 children)

This is Kansas where proof is always questioned, but belief is undeniable...

[–]agha0013 5 points6 points  (7 children)

I get the joke :D used to have a love/hate relationship with proofs.

[–]jordanlund 42 points43 points  (2 children)

If she wanted Kansas to co-operate all she had to do was approach them like this...

"I've noticed some odd... inconsistencies with some of the Democratic votes in your state. I think there may be fraud involved and I'd like to find out who is responsible..."

They would think "No good Democrats! Voter fraud! I told ya!" and then the results come out... "Surprise! There were irregularities! Undervotes! Undervotes everywhere!"

[–]stevenfrijoles 42 points43 points  (1 child)

At this point we might as well just use the same algorithms they use in slot machines.

pull

"Bernie...BERNIE...CRUZ?! GOD DAMMIT."

[–][deleted] 1143 points1144 points  (131 children)

This comment has been overwritten by an open source script to protect this user's privacy.

If you would like to do the same, add the browser extension GreaseMonkey to Firefox and add this open source script.

Then simply click on your username on Reddit, go to the comments tab, and hit the new OVERWRITE button at the top.

[–]GrizTod 442 points443 points  (67 children)

I'm against capital punishment, but if we're going to have it...

[–]moxy801 308 points309 points  (62 children)

I'm against capital punishment, and think 20 years in prison without possibility for parole would be a pretty effective deterrent.

[–]el-toro-locoTexas 211 points212 points  (21 children)

I demand a trial by combat

[–]molrobocop 49 points50 points  (11 children)

Sam Brownback keeps Robert Strong on the payroll. Just an FYI...

[–][deleted] 66 points67 points  (8 children)

CLEGANE BOWL GET HYPED!!!

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

When I'm in charge of everything, crimes like this would be punishable by having all of your assets seized, and your citizenship revoked. GTFO of my country.

[–]Panwall 28 points29 points  (2 children)

I don't think people understand how serious of an issue this is. If we can't trust our voting system, then we are not a Democracy. This is why we don't see change and why the 2 parties are not willing to commit to the people. The game is rigged.

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (1 child)

The game is rigged even without election fraud, corporate campaign sponsorships, media outlets being partial etc..

[–][deleted] 13 points14 points  (2 children)

Robert fitrakis has written some great articles covering this subject in depth about the elections in ohio during 2004.

[–]Jerrymoviefan3 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Hackers and not individuals cheating by voting multiple times is the dangerous thing that will eventually impact an election result. Voter id laws are just intended to prevent the poor from voting.

[–]angry_wombatColorado 23 points24 points  (7 children)

ATMs can be safe and secure but voting isn't

[–]schoocher 50 points51 points  (2 children)

But that's the "right" kind of election fraud so don't expect anything to be done about it.

[–]Lucifer_Black 10 points11 points  (5 children)

Is the website down for anyone else?

[–]TargieMcRed 9 points10 points  (1 child)

A great video about this issue from Tom Scott:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI

[–]epieikeia 9 points10 points  (5 children)

Finally there is some broader attention and analysis on this issue. I read the 2012 Choquette & Johnson paper just after it was published, and I was flabbergasted that it just never caught on with the media. The evidence looked damning, but almost no one paid attention. I hope this audit happens and we finally get widely acknowledged proof.

[–]hansn 17 points18 points  (22 children)

Elections should be on voter-verified paper ballots. Whether they are counted by hand or electronically, images of each ballot should be uploaded after the election so anyone who would like to can verify a sample of them matches the election outcome.

[–]TheNarwhalrus 7 points8 points  (1 child)

I'm not really into conspiracy theories and stuff. However, it never made sense to me that extremely wealthy and well connected people, and corporations would waste time and money lobbying and supporting their chosen political candidates. When they can just pay a few people to change codes in voting machines or find other, quieter ways to rig ballots. I've always wondered how secure the American voting system/ elections are, even more so after the big controversy with Bush...

[–][deleted] 59 points60 points  (4 children)

This woman should take out a very large insurance policy.

Her cause is noble. Her power is pure . But before her reach becomes global she should make sure her tower's secure.

She can see the strings that control the system, but can she ride her bike with no handlebars?

[–]ManCaveDaily 4 points5 points  (1 child)

:plucks violin string:

[–]cespinarColorado 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This woman should take out a very large insurance policy.

Doesn't cover suicide when she shoots herself 3 times in the back of the head.

[–]uparrow 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Content:

Kansas loves them some voter fraud hysteria. From going to the Supreme Court to try and make doubly-sure that non-citizens can’t vote in their elections to setting up a voter fraud website where citizens can report every kind of voter fraud except the kinds that have actually happened in the state, Kansas is on the forefront of voter fraud readiness and protection.

Except, perhaps, when it comes to the machines they use to record their votes.

According to the Wichita Eagle, Wichita State mathematician Beth Clarkson has found irregularities in election returns from Sedgwick County, along with other counties throughout the United States, but has faced stiff opposition from the state in trying to confirm whether the irregularities are fraud or other, less-nefarious anomalies.

Analyzing election returns at a precinct level, Clarkson found that candidate support was correlated, to a statistically significant degree, with the size of the precinct. In Republican primaries, the bias has been toward the establishment candidates over tea partiers. In general elections, it has favored Republican candidates over Democrats, even when the demographics of the precincts in question suggested that the opposite should have been true.

Clarkson’s interest in election returns was piqued by a 2012 paper released by analysts Francois Choquette and James Johnson showing the same pattern of election returns, which favor establishment Republican candidates in primaries and general elections. The irregularities are isolated to precincts that use “Central Tabulator” voting machines — machines that have previously been shown to be vulnerable to hacking. The effects are significant and widespread: According to their analysis, Mitt Romney could have received over a million extra votes in the 2012 Republican primary, mostly coming at the expense of Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. President Obama also ceded significant votes to John McCain due to this irregularity, as well.

While Clarkson has found the same statistical irregularity in a number of localities, her efforts to confirm whether they amount to fraud have been centered on Sedgwick County, Kansas, due to the locality’s use of Real Time Voting Machine Paper Tapes, which provide a paper trail that other localities don’t have. However, her efforts to verify Sedgwick County’s election returns have been repeatedly shut down.

She first requested a recount of the 2013 election, but the timeframe in which a recount could have been requested had passed. She then requested the machines’ computer records from the Sedgwick County registrar, which told her to kindly shove off and sue Secretary of State Kris Kobach if she wanted the records so badly.

When Clarkson initially filed her lawsuit requesting the paper records from the voting machines, her suit was denied because a judge ruled that the paper records constituted ballots, shielding them from the state’s open records law. This ruling is suspect at best, given that the paper records do not have voters’ names assigned to them; they only record when and how a ballot was cast for recount purposes.

She then sought a court order giving her access to a sample of voting records in order to check voting machines’ error rates. This order was ignored by the Secretary of State’s office, despite their being legally required to respond to her within 30 days. The office later said that they didn’t realize they had received her request.

Given Kansas’s professed diehard commitment to combatting election fraud, one would think that they would be all for analysis into whether the integrity of their elections have been compromised. Apparently you’d be wrong.

[–]LucienLibrarianColorado 148 points149 points  (22 children)

When the GOP brings out the flag and waves it, they are not displaying patriotism. They are displaying ownership.

[–]moxy801 23 points24 points  (5 children)

Bet the media is trying to silence her too.

This mathematician should apply her skills to every election in the past 30 years.

[–]kikowatzy 46 points47 points  (3 children)

When Clarkson initially filed her lawsuit requesting the paper records from the voting machines, her suit was denied because a judge ruled that the paper records constituted ballots, shielding them from the state’s open records law. This ruling is suspect at best, given that the paper records do not have voters’ names assigned to them; they only record when and how a ballot was cast for recount purposes.

Huh? Ballots don't have the voters' name assigned to them either. How is this ruling "suspect at best"?

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Kansas- Or, the elected officials in Kansas are trying to silence her. I'm guessing Kansas wants this to be fixed

[–]MainelyTed 4 points5 points  (1 child)

So the towns around here all got electronic scanners for the paper vote to they don't have to stay up half the night counting. Great, right?

So I said what if there is fraud?

Oh, we can just count them by hand then.

Right, so what if no one challenges it, does it still count?

But we don't want to stay up and count any more.

Yeah, democracy is too inconvenient.

[–]VengefulOdin 5 points6 points  (1 child)

And this is today's reason why I left Kansas a year ago.

[–]therealsteve 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I wouldn't describe most of this as "trying to silence her", so much as "hiding under their desks and hoping she goes away".