2016 Elections

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O Really
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Re: 2016 Elections

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Lots of people have legal addresses in more than one state. Even though you can only have one legal domicile, if you've got a vacation home, seasonal home, etc., you've got a legal address. When you register to vote, most places have a form to fill out so the new state can tell the old state you've changed, but they don't always send it in (obviously). But they might. So if I (hypothetically) tried to keep Florida registration and add NC registration, it may or may not work, and probably won't. But suppose it does. There's still some potential ID issues, because if you get a new driver's license, you have to give up the one you have. But I also kept a Florida state ID card (looks like a DL) which is also as valid as a DL, as well as a Florida CC license. So there are several obstacles to getting to the point where one really is registered in two states, and requires some bit of negligence on the part of the states.

But if it all worked, I'm still thinking it would be a while before the duplicate vote was discovered. Finding Trump's family and flunkies would be easy. Start with a list of names you'd like to find "guilty" and look in the states where they're known to have lived. Wouldn't be that many, and wouldn't take tht long. But without starting with names, and having 50 states plus DC and Puerto Rico to check against each other for duplicates would seem to be a massive task.

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Vrede too
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Re: 2016 Elections

Unread post by Vrede too »

The IT guys here would know better than me whether it's that massive for computers to do given the info. available on voting and voter reg. databases. For a possibly similar enough example, it's become nearly instantaneous to find anyone's arrest and conviction record going back decades.
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Re: 2016 Elections

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Vrede too wrote:The IT guys here would know better than me whether it's that massive for computers to do given the info. available on voting and voter reg. databases. For a possibly similar enough example, it's become nearly instantaneous to find anyone's arrest and conviction record going back decades.
What's it's not easy to do is find anyone's arrest and conviction record *with accuracy*. And even then a lot of what accuracy there is, has to do with the arrest and conviction itself: The person gets put into a new database with a thorough check to ensure that they're not using a fake ID. By being convicted (or accused), you give up some rights to stay out of databases.

Even then the conviction databases are not entirely accurate. There are people in the US whose identities are falsely used by criminals, and who keep getting face-planted into the pavement by police every time their name is looked up. Because different jurisdictions keep different databases - but occasionally synchronize data - a name removed from a database will reappear later. (Bob is added to the database. The data is synchronized with another jurisdiction. Bob is removed from the local database after unjustly being given the pavement taste test. But the data is again synchronized with another jurisdiction, and Bob's record reappears.)

Social Security numbers are no good as a unique identifier. 40 million SSNs are assigned to multiple people. (Meaning that at least *80* million people have non-unique SSNs.) And beyond that, since it's not hard to find out someone's SSN, SSNs are commonly used *FOR* identity theft.

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Vrede too
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Re: 2016 Elections

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Yeah, I know from personal experience that a criminal background check shows convictions, but not subsequent expungements. Otherwise, mine was accurate and even included at least one event that I'd forgotten about.

The NC voter reg. form only asks for the last 4 digits of your SSN, but it does also demand Date of Birth and full name.

So, with computers sorting through that data and voting records, then some human checking of iffy results, would finding or debunking widespread likely double voting be that impossible?
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O Really
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Re: 2016 Elections

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Plus, finding a record of one guy is different from finding records of any guy. But there's another reason why individual voting fraud isn't a problem. Most places it wouldn't matter anyway. It would matter only in states where the election is really close, and even then it would make a difference only if you created thousands of fake votes. How're you going to round up a bunch of people willing to risk a felony charge over a meaningless vote for Hillary in South Carolina? Or for Trump in Maryland?

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Re: 2016 Elections

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Vrede too wrote:Yeah, I know from personal experience that a criminal background check shows convictions, but not subsequent expungements. Otherwise, mine was accurate and even included at least one event that I'd forgotten about.
Again, even assuming 100% accuracy, a criminal background check shows convictions because those convictions at there to begin with. (And not necessarily if you do the lookup in a different state.) Those who don't have a conviction simply aren't in the database. Nor are they in any database anywhere near as comprehensive as the ones used for criminal background checks.

Humans checking iffy results would only help so much. The humans won't have the information they need any more than the computers do.

The two Florida women in my link above didn't just have the same Social Security number; they were born on the same day, in the same state, and had almost the same name. Obviously that's quite rare, but minimize the criteria to just the last four SSN digits plus Date of Birth and full name, and the error rate goes way up.

Unless there's some form of unique national ID - and with 80 million+ duplicates the SSN ain't it - your error rate is higher than simply not trying. More valid voters will be prevented from voting than fraudulent voters. It'll lean heavily against poor voters, who are less likely to have drivers licences, government employment background checks, etc.

Various states will oppose it - as they already have. The libertarian right and the religious right (declaring it "the mark of the beast") will oppose it, as they already have. (InfoWars and the others monetizing conspiritards used claims of a national ID back during the Bush II years.)

And again, a unique national ID won't prevent identity theft any more than SSNs do.

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Re: 2016 Elections

Unread post by Vrede too »

Yeah, I'm not arguing for a national ID. So, you're saying that no attempt to ID double voters with existing data and tech would be accurate enough to see if it's a real issue? Okay then, just checking.
O Really wrote:Plus, finding a record of one guy is different from finding records of any guy. But there's another reason why individual voting fraud isn't a problem. Most places it wouldn't matter anyway. It would matter only in states where the election is really close, and even then it would make a difference only if you created thousands of fake votes. How're you going to round up a bunch of people willing to risk a felony charge over a meaningless vote for Hillary in South Carolina? Or for Trump in Maryland?
Agreed. It would be nice to be able to prove President* Trump wrong. Otherwise, he gets to keep spewing the BS while morons swallow it.
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Re: 2016 Elections

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Vrede too wrote:Yeah, I'm not arguing for a national ID. So, you're saying that no attempt to ID double voters with existing data and tech would be accurate enough to see if it's a real issue? Okay then, just checking.
Sort of. Checking is good. But without good data it could easily make things worse. Even without something like the Republican voter ID initiatives in 2000, 2012 and 2016 that were designed specifically to skew election results in their favor.

As the Trump team members registered in more than one state demonstrate, moving between states leads to double registrations but NOT double votes. A better form of checking would come after the vote: Start with the list of double registrations and remove those who didn't double-vote. Now you have a much smaller list that you can do follow-up checks on, including simply asking those involved. That'll eliminate most of the rest on the list, folks who simply have the same name and DOB as someone else.

For the remainder you do a full investigation, understanding that many still on the list will still be innocent of wrong-doing. But at least now you have a manageable number of cases. And you haven't prevented valid voters from voting, and you haven't skewed the election results against the poor.

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Re: 2016 Elections

Unread post by Vrede too »

Sounds like it can be done, and I haven't said anything about precluding voting or even charging folks, though I guess that would be the result. I was just speculating on whether we can prove Trump right or wrong.
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Re: 2016 Elections

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Vrede too wrote:Sounds like it can be done, and I haven't said anything about precluding voting or even charging folks, though I guess that would be the result. I was just speculating on whether we can prove Trump right or wrong.
Well unfortunately, he'll just move the goal post. Trump needs to prove his assertion. It's not up to everyone to disprove every stupid thing that comes out of his mouth.

I know that it's a problem that a great many people don't understand this.... the only way to improve that is better education. :-(

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Re: 2016 Elections

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Sadly, until we have better education we do have to disprove every stupid thing that comes out of his mouth . . . not that there won't be some fun in doing so.
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Re: 2016 Elections

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In some cases, responding legitimizes the stupid statement by making it appear "debateable." Hopefully, the various media will get to the point - sooner rather than later - of covering much of Trump as, "Today President*Trump tweeted 4 untrue statements, 3 baldfaced lies, and 2 showing a ridiculous level of ignorance. In addition, he insulted 4 international leaders and had 6 staffers quit or be fired. In other news, weather in Seattle will be cloudy with chance of rain..."

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Re: 2016 Elections

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AP: Trump's voter fraud expert registered in 3 states

A man who President Donald Trump has promoted as an authority on voter fraud was registered to vote in multiple states during the 2016 presidential election, the Associated Press has learned.

Gregg Phillips, whose unsubstantiated claim that the election was marred by 3 million illegal votes was tweeted by the president, was listed on the rolls in Alabama, Texas and Mississippi, according to voting records and election officials in those states. He voted only in Alabama in November, records show.

In a post earlier this month, Phillips described "an amazing effort" by volunteers tied to True the Vote, an organization whose board he sits on, who he said found "thousands of duplicate records and registrations of dead people."

Trump has made an issue of people who are registered to vote in more than one state, using it as one of the bedrocks of his overall contention that voter fraud is rampant in the U.S. and that voting by 3 to 5 million immigrants illegally in the country cost him the popular vote in November....

Citing concerns about voters registered in several states, the president last week called for a major investigation into his claim of voter fraud, despite his campaign lawyer's conclusion that the 2016 election was "not tainted."

"When you look at the people that are registered, dead, illegal and two states, and some cases maybe three states, we have a lot to look into," Trump said in an ABC interview.

Reached by telephone Monday, Phillips said he was unaware of his multiple registrations but asked, "Why would I know or care?" ...

According to media reports, five Trump family members or top administration officials also were registered to vote in two states during the 2016 election — chief White House strategist Stephen Bannon; Press Secretary Sean Spicer; Treasury Secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin; Tiffany Trump, the president's youngest daughter; and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and a senior White House adviser.

The Houston-based True the Vote has challenged the validity of voter rolls in numerous states. On Friday, Phillips tweeted that the conservative group "will lead the analysis" of widespread voter fraud, and suggested in a CNN interview that it might release the underlying data in a few months.

Shortly after Phillips appeared on CNN on Friday, Trump tweeted: "Look forward to seeing the final results of VoteStand. Gregg Phillips and crew say at least 3,000,000 votes were illegal. We must do better!"
:roll: :lol: So much for any notion that President* Trump's voter fraud investigation is going to be impartial and credible.
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Re: 2016 Elections

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Now We Know What Every State Has Been Stress-Googling Since the Election

... These "what each state has Googled" maps are tricky; they come with all manner of caveats and would be very easy to completely fabricate should some unscrupulous publication become hungry enough for clicks, so please bear in mind that A) these are politics-themed searches only, as I'm sure people are still reading Walking Dead recaps way more than they are a rundown of Betsy DeVos's policies, and B) these are what these states are Googling MORE than the others, not the straight-up most. Anyway, let's take a look:

Image
NC: Richard Spencer punched.gif :thumbup:

VA: Gay dance party Mike Pence :lol: I had to google that one - http://time.com/4639152/mike-pence-queer-dance-party/

AZ, VT: How to emigrate to Canada :D

Iowa: Russian prostitutes :o

AL, of course: Who is Frederick Douglas?

RI: Trump impeachment odds

SC, of course: What is a pussy hat?

AK: Kakistocracy :lol: :cry: I had to google that one - A kakistocracy is a state or country run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens.
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Re: 2016 Elections

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Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
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Re: 2016 Elections

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Immediately after Mike Pence's departure, reasonable Indiana Republicans began undoing his work
As Governor of Indiana, Mike Pence was significantly to the right of the mainstream, even for his own party -- so it's no surprise that in the days after his resignation (to become vice president of the USA), his successor and state Republican lawmakers: pardoned an innocent man who'd been locked up for 20 years (whom Mike Pence refused to help); allowed a town to declare a state of emergency; greenlit a needle-exchange; and overrode his vetoes, which would have allowed university cops to keep their records secret and which prevented strict environmental rules.

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Re: 2016 Elections

Unread post by Vrede too »

Any thoughts on what Hillary is up to? Not that she isn't speaking the truth, but I don't think that she's hurting Dolt .45, helping the resistance to him or improving her own image. Is there some endgame here that I'm not seeing?
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O Really
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Re: 2016 Elections

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I hate to say it, but there's a possibility she's just still pissed off. Her carping about the obvious accomplishes nothing and detracts from better resistance efforts. If she wants to help, IMNVHO she should go to places where she won and help elect Dem candidates.

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Re: 2016 Elections

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Found:
I've come to the conclusion that the only reason anyone voted for Trump was just resentment about being proven wrong about everything.
:D :thumbup:
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Re: 2016 Elections

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Trump Is a ‘Blowhard,’ ‘I Don’t Like Him’ and I Voted for Hillary, George Bush Says in New Book

Both former President Bushes had choice words for current President Donald Trump in a new book scheduled to be published later this month, with the elder Bush reportedly calling the billionaire commander-in-chief a “blowhard” and flatly stating he does not “like” him....

Furthermore, both ex-presidents admitted they did not vote for Trump. The elder Bush pulled the lever for Democrat Hillary Clinton while the younger told Updegrove he voted for “none of the above.” ...
:shock:

Of course, their votes were irrelevant in Trump-certain Texas, but saying so publicly last Fall might have had an impact.
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