Four precincts in Outagamie County involved in possible election fraud

[Tom Sawyer]

So the size of each state is about 10M. Thus totally applicable.

Besides: Why would size matter? The work/cost per capita would be the same.

Arithmetic and geographt arent your long suits, I'm guessing. State population size varies tremendously, as does the distribution of population within states.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population


Add in the face that states determine voting laws, including regulations about how ballots are cast, collected, and counted and it's really not at all the same thing as counting votes in one state and then repeating the process 32 times.

But why would that matter in terms of manually counting votes? Say that every poll worker counts 10,000 ballots. If there are a million people in your state, the state hires 100 people for the evening to do that. If a state has 30 million people in it, it hires 3,000 people to do it. Since the states run the voting, the training program they give those people focuses on how vote counting works in that state. If there's any questions or concerns about a particular ballot, that ballot is put in a separate pile which is then dealt with by a more experienced person with more in-depth training. Each person is doing essentially the same thing and that doesn't change when you get a larger group of people doing that same thing.

 

[Toni]

Arithmetic and geographt arent your long suits, I'm guessing. State population size varies tremendously, as does the distribution of population within states.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population


Add in the face that states determine voting laws, including regulations about how ballots are cast, collected, and counted and it's really not at all the same thing as counting votes in one state and then repeating the process 32 times.

But why would that matter in terms of manually counting votes? Say that every poll worker counts 10,000 ballots. If there are a million people in your state, the state hires 100 people for the evening to do that. If a state has 30 million people in it, it hires 3,000 people to do it. Since the states run the voting, the training program they give those people focuses on how vote counting works in that state. If there's any questions or concerns about a particular ballot, that ballot is put in a separate pile which is then dealt with by a more experienced person with more in-depth training. Each person is doing essentially the same thing and that doesn't change when you get a larger group of people doing that same thing.

Not all states and not all precincts within states manually count ballots, to start with.


Then think about error limits. Suppose one knows that when one measures/counts <anything> that there is some error involved. Say it's 0.01%. What happens to that error when you repeat the same process, whatever that process is x 32?

As an aside, I was an election official when I was 18. Yes, a real election, working at a local precinct as an election official. I even got paid a whopping $15 and got out of school for the day, had my picture in the paper, the whole shebang.

FF many years later and I was involved in helping run the campaign of a local person (who won his race). In my area, there are paper ballots--you fill in the oval next to the name of the candidate you wish, drop it into the ballot box, where ballots are collected and read by scantron or some such. The opponent of my candidate challenged the the results. Which meant that the ballots were re-counted manually. Some ballots were initially rejected: an oval wasn't completely filled in, more than one candidate was selected, etc. Some other irregularities that caused the ballots to be initially rejected.

Each candidate had the opportunity to challenge any 'questionable' ballot. This might include a ballot where the candidate was selected by marking an X through the oval rather than filling in the oval completely, or an oval that was only partially filled in, or stray markings, etc. The opposition made a point of challenging any small irregularity where the ballot seemed to be marked in favor of my candidate. My candidate had no intention of challenging ballots at all but since it was a close enough race that a re-count could be requested, and since the other guy was challenging ballots, my candidate also began to challenge ballots. That is, his designated person--that was me, actually--began to challenge any ballots which seemed sufficiently irregular but actually to favor the opposition. All but a small number of ballots were resolved without incident. The criteria was if the intent of the voter could be determined, the vote was counted, rather than the voter's ability/willingness to fill in the oval completely. In the end, there were not enough ballots the opposition could challenge to sway the election in his favor. My candidate won.

Note: We were talking about a few thousand ballots, which were examined ONLY for the local race in question--not for any other race. I live in a small city removed from large population centers by >100 miles, in a state of medium population, low population density.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

But why would that matter in terms of manually counting votes? Say that every poll worker counts 10,000 ballots. If there are a million people in your state, the state hires 100 people for the evening to do that. If a state has 30 million people in it, it hires 3,000 people to do it. Since the states run the voting, the training program they give those people focuses on how vote counting works in that state. If there's any questions or concerns about a particular ballot, that ballot is put in a separate pile which is then dealt with by a more experienced person with more in-depth training. Each person is doing essentially the same thing and that doesn't change when you get a larger group of people doing that same thing.

Not all states and not all precincts within states manually count ballots, to start with.

Which was the issue being raised in the post you responded to. That they should all be counted manually.

Then think about error limits. Suppose one knows that when one measures/counts <anything> that there is some error involved. Say it's 0.01%. What happens to that error when you repeat the same process, whatever that process is x 32?

I am thinking about error limits and only error limits. When you manually count ballots, a certain percentage are going to be counted wrong. That can be reduced with proper training and any unclear ballots being passed up to second tier inspection, but there's always going to be a certain amount that are wrong. That's why you have recounts in close races - because that inevitable margin of error might end up being greater than the margin of victory and manual ballots give you the ability to double check the results and correct for those errors.

With electronic voting, the error limit is unclear. It might be zero percent and it might a thousand percent. Without the ability to double check the results, the accuracy of the vote tally is completely undetermined.

 

[skepticalbip]

Arithmetic and geographt arent your long suits, I'm guessing. State population size varies tremendously, as does the distribution of population within states.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population


Add in the face that states determine voting laws, including regulations about how ballots are cast, collected, and counted and it's really not at all the same thing as counting votes in one state and then repeating the process 32 times.

But why would that matter in terms of manually counting votes? Say that every poll worker counts 10,000 ballots. If there are a million people in your state, the state hires 100 people for the evening to do that. If a state has 30 million people in it, it hires 3,000 people to do it. Since the states run the voting, the training program they give those people focuses on how vote counting works in that state. If there's any questions or concerns about a particular ballot, that ballot is put in a separate pile which is then dealt with by a more experienced person with more in-depth training. Each person is doing essentially the same thing and that doesn't change when you get a larger group of people doing that same thing.

Vote count: Florida 2000...



http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/bush-gore-hanging-chad-florida-570x363.jpg

 

[Tom Sawyer]

But why would that matter in terms of manually counting votes? Say that every poll worker counts 10,000 ballots. If there are a million people in your state, the state hires 100 people for the evening to do that. If a state has 30 million people in it, it hires 3,000 people to do it. Since the states run the voting, the training program they give those people focuses on how vote counting works in that state. If there's any questions or concerns about a particular ballot, that ballot is put in a separate pile which is then dealt with by a more experienced person with more in-depth training. Each person is doing essentially the same thing and that doesn't change when you get a larger group of people doing that same thing.

Vote count: Florida 2000...

And that's an excellent example of how things should work. When a vote is that close, each one of those disputed ballots takes on extraordinary importance but a judgment can be reached about them. If it were done electronically and yet there were undiscovered flaws in the code which caused a 0.01% discrepancy in the final results, then there'd be nothing available to correct for this discrepancy and find the actual vote totals.

 

[Toni]

Not all states and not all precincts within states manually count ballots, to start with.

Which was the issue being raised in the post you responded to.

Really? Because it read more like: Why don't you do things the way we do in Sweden?

Now, straight up I want to say that I don't' mean to pick on Juma, who is a thoughtful person. That said, from Juma's post:

Errors are controlled for and are extremely rare.

How do we control for errors?

Why would anyone be so sloppy so "errors will sometimes occur"? That is total bullshit, if you do it right there wont be any errors.

Seems a contradiction to the statement above. Maybe I'm missing something.

In theory, it's all very straightforward and simple. In reality, it can be very complicated and very overwhelming. Elections are run by volunteers. In my area, they are mostly retirees. When I was young, most were run by women because women very rarely had full time paid jobs, which is no longer the case.

As for manually counting--remember, I've actually done just that--it is very time consuming --we spent an entire day counting and recounting a few thousand votes. It was also is prone to counting errors. Multiple people count the same ballots. Any discrepant results are recounted until everyone concurs on the tally. Add in the fact--and it is an absolute fact--that some ballots are not marked in such a way as to make clear the voter's intent (the standard used in my state), and some contain discrepancies: two candidates for the same office are selected so it is impossible to determine which candidate got the vote, etc. This absolutely happens. Why do people mess up their ballots? Because they are people.

That they should all be counted manually.

I don't disagree, actually. I am just speaking to the fact that they are not, that individual states determine how elections are run, how ballots are cast and counted. It's part of being 'Merican. Actually, it is based in our history.

Some/most states have attempted to modernize elections--i.e. go to some form of electronic voting to reduce time/cost. Why? Well, only an extremely small portion of the population is actually available to count ballots. This, by and large, is not a paid position and it is not easy, interesting nor is it full of glory. It took us all day--and we were only counting a few thousand (I don't remember the exact number) of ballots for ONE race of many races. And we had disagreements about which ballots should and should not be counted.


Keep in mind that the population of the US is far greater than the population of the country of anyone outside the US responding to this thread. Canada has about the same population as California plus North Carolina. Sweden has about the same population as North Carolina or any other medium population state.

It takes more time, more manpower, more everything to count so many ballots.

I am thinking about error limits and only error limits. When you manually count ballots, a certain percentage are going to be counted wrong. That can be reduced with proper training and any unclear ballots being passed up to second tier inspection, but there's always going to be a certain amount that are wrong. That's why you have recounts in close races - because that inevitable margin of error might end up being greater than the margin of victory and manual ballots give you the ability to double check the results and correct for those errors.

With electronic voting, the error limit is unclear. It might be zero percent and it might a thousand percent. Without the ability to double check the results, the accuracy of the vote tally is completely undetermined.

Well, as far as I know, one can re-count ballots electronically as well.

As far as 'training' goes, I had zero: zippo: nada Not a damn bit unless you count me learning to count and to add decades prior to the election I am talking about. Even as my stint as an election official at age 18, I had my high school government class plus about 15 minutes and all the good will the ladies who worked elections every election could manage. But that was it.

Personally, I prefer paper ballots and manually counting, for all the reasons you've mentioned. It's not without its challenges and problems. Cost, manpower, and absolutely the opportunity to sway a close election through dishonesty definitely exists.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Yes, the US is ten times bigger than Canada, but it also has ten times the wealth, so the process scales fine. When you use ten times the manpower to count ten times as many ballots, the size differential in the country doesn't make for a significant difference in time.

Also, how do you recount the electronic ballots? If the machine is hacked, there's no record of what the counts were prior to the hack. If a vote is saved incorrectly to the database due to a memory leak or coding error, how do you resolve the discrepancy between what the voter selected and what was recorded?

 

[RavenSky]

There seems to be another type of election fraud in the works and that is keeping people who are legitimate voters from voting or getting their vote thrown out. Greg Palast talks about this on his website and has for many years.

This is far more common that any other type of election fraud, I think. And was rampant during this election cycle, too. The bogus voter registration requirements are an example

 

[Toni]

Yes, the US is ten times bigger than Canada, but it also has ten times the wealth, so the process scales fine. When you use ten times the manpower to count ten times as many ballots, the size differential in the country doesn't make for a significant difference in time.

Also, how do you recount the electronic ballots? If the machine is hacked, there's no record of what the counts were prior to the hack. If a vote is saved incorrectly to the database due to a memory leak or coding error, how do you resolve the discrepancy between what the voter selected and what was recorded?

In my state, we use paper ballots, which are counted electronically.
The paper ballots are retained and can be scanned again if needed or counted manually, as I helped do in one election.

I'm not clear about whether you object to that process.

Whether ten times the (volunteer) manpower is available and willing and able is speculation. Have you personally been involved in an election? Served as an election official? Been involved in counting ballots? If you have, can you tell us about that a little bit?

I've read tons of suggestions about people voting by email or otherwise through the Internet --something that I think is insane because of the potential for many kinds of abuse and interference plus the fact that it would effectively disenfranchise millions of older voters and those without Internet access. Just for starters.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Yes, the US is ten times bigger than Canada, but it also has ten times the wealth, so the process scales fine. When you use ten times the manpower to count ten times as many ballots, the size differential in the country doesn't make for a significant difference in time.

Also, how do you recount the electronic ballots? If the machine is hacked, there's no record of what the counts were prior to the hack. If a vote is saved incorrectly to the database due to a memory leak or coding error, how do you resolve the discrepancy between what the voter selected and what was recorded?

In my state, we use paper ballots, which are counted electronically.
The paper ballots are retained and can be scanned again if needed or counted manually, as I helped do in one election.

I'm not clear about whether you object to that process.

Whether ten times the (volunteer) manpower is available and willing and able is speculation. Have you personally been involved in an election? Served as an election official? Been involved in counting ballots? If you have, can you tell us about that a little bit?

I've read tons of suggestions about people voting by email or otherwise through the Internet --something that I think is insane because of the potential for many kinds of abuse and interference plus the fact that it would effectively disenfranchise millions of older voters and those without Internet access. Just for starters.

Ah, I see what you're saying. If it's using a computer which then prints out a ballot which the voter can then double check before submitting, I have no objection to that because it's fully auditable. It's the ones without the paper trail I'm talking about.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

A county in Wisconsin named Outagamie County had four precincts in the areas of Cicero, Grand Chute, Bear Creek, and Hortonville which all showed that they had fewer people overall than had voted in the presidential election. This instance, naturally, caused the Internet to fly in a fury claiming, rightly, that voter fraud was taking place. The precincts quickly adjusted their voting totals, which removed over a thousand votes from Donald Trump’s side.

http://occupydemocrats.com/2016/11/...s-just-admitted-padded-trumps-win-fake-votes/

Other sources dismiss this as *just* the difference between the "unofficial" early count and the later official count. Then why didn't the count for Clinton change?

Where is the source for the change in number of votes cast for Trump and Clinton?

 

[Elixir]

The "fraud" that had the biggest effect on the US presidential election was the cumulative effect of the fake news generators. The clueless, uneducated masses ate up every scrap of "Hillary is going to repeal the 2nd amendment" and similar BS. You can fix the electoral process all you want, but you can't fix teh stoopid. Given the resounding success of these loudly shouted, oft repeated lies, I think we can look forward to much much more of the same in future elections. But by all means, let's hang that woman who voted for Trump twice - make an example out of her! Let 'em know that no matter how ill-informed they might be, they're only allowed to place one vote for the candidate favored by the propaganda machines of Russia and the RNC.

 

[RavenSky]

So the Michigan recount is already showing some major problems, including voting machines that had their seals broken, and Trump's people are filing lawsuits to stop recounts in other states. Realistically I don't think the recounts will ultimately change anything, but what if...

What if enough recounts show that HRC should have won those states' ECs? What if it happens after Dec 20? What if the recount itself doesn't make a difference, but enough machines have been tampered with to throw the results into question?

Is there any precedent for any of this in US history?

Sent from my SM-G920T1 using Tapatalk

 

[Axulus]

Yes, the US is ten times bigger than Canada, but it also has ten times the wealth, so the process scales fine. When you use ten times the manpower to count ten times as many ballots, the size differential in the country doesn't make for a significant difference in time.

Also, how do you recount the electronic ballots? If the machine is hacked, there's no record of what the counts were prior to the hack. If a vote is saved incorrectly to the database due to a memory leak or coding error, how do you resolve the discrepancy between what the voter selected and what was recorded?

And if someone throws a match onto the pile of paper ballots after they've been gathered together, how do you obtain a record of the votes?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So the Michigan recount is already showing some major problems, including voting machines that had their seals broken, and Trump's people are filing lawsuits to stop recounts in other states. Realistically I don't think the recounts will ultimately change anything, but what if...

What if enough recounts show that HRC should have won those states' ECs? What if it happens after Dec 20? What if the recount itself doesn't make a difference, but enough machines have been tampered with to throw the results into question?

Is there any precedent for any of this in US history?

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We don't have any adequate system for dealing with election fraud.

- - - Updated - - -

And if someone throws a match onto the pile of paper ballots after they've been gathered together, how do you obtain a record of the votes?

Or destroys some and replaces them with others...

 

[whichphilosophy]

So the Michigan recount is already showing some major problems, including voting machines that had their seals broken, and Trump's people are filing lawsuits to stop recounts in other states. Realistically I don't think the recounts will ultimately change anything, but what if...

What if enough recounts show that HRC should have won those states' ECs? What if it happens after Dec 20? What if the recount itself doesn't make a difference, but enough machines have been tampered with to throw the results into question?

Is there any precedent for any of this in US history?

Sent from my SM-G920T1 using Tapatalk

If there is any shadow of doubt then there should be recounts even if the outcome may not be likely to be affected.

 

[Trausti]

So the Michigan recount is already showing some major problems, including voting machines that had their seals broken, and Trump's people are filing lawsuits to stop recounts in other states. Realistically I don't think the recounts will ultimately change anything, but what if...

What if enough recounts show that HRC should have won those states' ECs? What if it happens after Dec 20? What if the recount itself doesn't make a difference, but enough machines have been tampered with to throw the results into question?

Is there any precedent for any of this in US history?

Sent from my SM-G920T1 using Tapatalk

If there is any shadow of doubt then there should be recounts even if the outcome may not be likely to be affected.

Clinton won New Hampshire by a mere 2,700 votes. Best to start there.

 

[RavenSky]

So the Michigan recount is already showing some major problems, including voting machines that had their seals broken, and Trump's people are filing lawsuits to stop recounts in other states. Realistically I don't think the recounts will ultimately change anything, but what if...

What if enough recounts show that HRC should have won those states' ECs? What if it happens after Dec 20? What if the recount itself doesn't make a difference, but enough machines have been tampered with to throw the results into question?

Is there any precedent for any of this in US history?

Sent from my SM-G920T1 using Tapatalk

If there is any shadow of doubt then there should be recounts even if the outcome may not be likely to be affected.

I agree. Trump doesn't.

My question is asking what happens if substantial vote disparities, election fraud and/or tampering is discovered. There has already been minor issues uncovered (as noted in earlier posts). At what stage does the entire election get called into question. If it is substantial enough, does the election go to Hillary? To Pence? To someone else? Is there a new election?

 

[Trausti]

Well the money Stein scammed, er, raised for the Wisconsin recount seems to have been well spent.

Washburn County: Discrepancies in Town of Bashaw were due to an error in the previous certification. The total ballots for Trump/Pence should have been 385 instead of the 352 reported.

Fond Du Lac County: 13 absentee envolopes were missing from Election Night and 1 absentee ballot counted on Election Night was rejected during recount canvassing of Town of Fond Du Lac Wards 1-8. A draw-down was done resulting in a loss of 7 votes for Trump/Pence and a loss of 7 votes for Clinton/Kaine.

http://theuptake.org/2016/12/03/wisconsin-vote-totals-change-little-on-recount-day-3-absentee-votes-still-not-reported/

 

[whichphilosophy]

If there is any shadow of doubt then there should be recounts even if the outcome may not be likely to be affected.

Clinton won New Hampshire by a mere 2,700 votes. Best to start there.

This could snowball.