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Comment by thaumasiotes | Hacker News Reader

I would imagine that poll workers have a minimum age. Their death rate is going to be substantially below, not above, the average, because most deaths are due to (complications associated with) old age and that population is very unlikely to be working counting votes.

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> old age and that population is very unlikely to be working counting votes.

Why do you think so? Here, election committees are stereotypically composed of retirees that have nothing better to do...

Yeah, but they're people looking for something to do, unlike hospice patients.

Is that accurate for Indonesia? I haven't looked into it deeply, but they have a relatively low median life expectancy and the mortality rate under 60[1] is quite high.

[1] https://knoema.com/atlas/Indonesia/topics/Demographics/Morta...

FWIW, I got it from the CIA World Factbook [1]. The UN [2] has a crude death rate of 7.1, leading to 136 deaths (of 7m) per day. It's all in the same ballpark.

To see whether it's abnormal or not, one would have to examine the age profile of the volunteers and crunch the numbers.

The uncritical reporting is quite disappointing. I mean, more than 1000 people died in New York in the week following the Indonesian election. Someone please look into that!!!!1!!1!

[1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

[2] https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publicatio...

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