Voting misinformation flourishes on Facebook
propublica.org
propublica.org
IMHO, additionally this kind of data investigation needs someone with a good data science background. Otherwise all we're doing is using very limited observable dataset to make bold statements, which ironically what is happening with scaring public about voting by mail.
The author of this article is some former pentagon and possibly a military spook and not a data scientist https://projects.propublica.org/trump-town/staffers/ryan-mcc...
This is literally a strawman argument.
> this kind of data investigation needs someone with a good data science background. Otherwise all we're doing is using very limited observable dataset to make bold statements
Some of the research mentioned was funded by:
> The Newton and Rochelle Becker Charitable Trust
> Craig Newmark Philanthropies
> Democracy Fund
> Facebook Journalism Project
> Ford Foundation
> Google News Initiative
> John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
> Open Society Foundations
> Bernard and Anne Spitzer Charitable Trust
Propublica is the gold standard in this space as far as I know. (538 is a close second in my book, but they’re narrowly focused on politics and sports).
I suggest browsing their homepage to see what I mean. Well over fifty percent of the stories are backed by datasets they gathered themselves, and a good chunk of the remaining ones are about problems with lack of government transparency that directly impacted them:
If you are a data scientist, you might be interested in other data sets they curate. These are mostly useful for social scientists, journalists and policy makers:
https://www.propublica.org/datastore/
Disclaimer: I’ve donated to them in the past.
However, that doesn't mean everything they do has the same standard nor all their journalists approach their work with the same type of journalistic rigor. I think we need to judge every article on its own merit and not just based on some brand value alone.
[0] https://features.propublica.org/navy-accidents/uss-fitzgeral...
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/06/26/1_in_5...
Many other stories like this.
What's alarming is that the democrats tried to push through a bill that eliminated the state laws for voter integrity for all mail in ballots across states: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/may/12/democrats-c...
So if this has become law, what would have stopped China from printing a bunch of ballots and sending in them?
Nothing.
The media told us that mail in ballot fraud was non existent. Then when the cases started to reveal this was a false narrative, the media moved the goal posts and said "oh it happens, but only happens by republicans."
It's just an ever changing set of goal posts. It's very clear for those of us paying attention that mail in ballot fraud is the MAIN vector of voter fraud now. Those that proclaim this doesn't exist are naive or willfully deceptive.
The idea that you can vote without an ID is really unprecedented in the whole world. The united states is special in that it allows it at all. But this is quickly changing.
Tick Tock.
No reports of fraud that I know of - A handful of people trying to steal ballots, but they were just invalidated and sent out again
I'm not aware of a single claim that withstood scrutiny or that was even attempted to prosecute, let alone done so successfully.
I'm not talking about isolated instances. That certainly has happened. I'm talking enough fraud to actually change an election. And I'm going to restrict you to the state or federal level, as I wouldn't be surprised that it happens at the local/county level in some hick outposts.
So what do ya got? Show me an election that was actually affected by widespread fraud.
The major problem is you can’t measure it in the first place because there is no truth set. Unless you can follow up with every single individual and confirm their vote, you dont have the data.
These are all important concerns, but they have absolutely nothing to do with vote fraud. The first two are voter suppression activities. The last four are election fraud, which is a very different thing than voter fraud.
The notion that you have to follow up with every single voter is absurd. You can statistically sample anywhere you suspect (imagine) that fraud transpired and dig deeper in areas where you get hits.
OP's first article even cites Rick Hasen who notes that there were only 491 prosecutions for absentee ballot fraud between 2000-2012.
There is no widespread vote fraud problem. There hasn't been for decades
This is absolutely unproven. And absentee ballots are not the only way people vote, with prosecutions are only those who are caught and convicted. Here's a list of 1071 proven instances (more than twice) from the very first search on the subject: https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/p...
There is no way to know what the real votes are supposed to be unless you confirm with the person who voted.
Whether you want to call it election fraud or voting fraud, it's the same problem because you don't know it occurred unless you have the ground truth to check against. There is no mass confirmation stage for votes to be able to gather this data and thus it's completely unknown.
Here are some other reviews:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/08/06/a-com...
https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/debunking-voter-fraud...
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/05/politics/ohio-illegal-voting-...
Also 99.9% of people already have IDs and need them for living in society so it's strange to say that voting is the only thing that should be defended from requiring it. I find this outright dismissal of no fraud existing to be worrisome. It's the same as antivax and other conspiracy theories and more aligned with a narrative than any discovery of truth.
> Also 99.9% of people already have IDs
Citation needed.
https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a...
I find it odd that you accuse me of conspiracy theory as you're the one alleging a conspiracy without being able to provide any evidence that one exists. Before you re-cite your 1,071 instances in reply, note that in every one of my comments I said widespread fraud. I never argued that incidental fraud does not occur
Your links are limited to voter ID but there are more types of fraud and, as I explained before, they're all the same as far as needing confirmation to be able to measure. Instant dismissal without study is the problem, and just as conspiratorial as saying it's rampant. I simply want the truth through evidence.
As far as IDs, they're necessary for: opening a bank account, cashing a check, driving a car, buying a car, buying a house, signing a lease, having employment, buying any insurance, using any form of credit, going to school, paying for utilities, receiving welfare, food stamps or any public benefits. Please explain the overlap of people who have never done any of these things, don't have any ID, don't have any legal documentation, and are eligible to vote.
Your 2nd link describes someone who has 2 IDs already, and has failed to get a new one after it expired. There will always be anecdotes of such paperwork mishaps but this doesn't show that there's a structural problem (he refuses to go to court to fix records even though fees can be waived easily). The idea that a certain race or group of people are incapable of attaining IDs like everyone else is a prime example of the bigotry of soft expectations.
Where we disagree is on your insistence that the possibility that it may happen is worth suppressing the vote of the "11% of U.S. citizens – or more than 21 million Americans – [who] do not have government-issued photo identification."
You have presented no evidence - at all - that it is a widespread problem, that it is a pervasive problem.
I, on the other hand, have cited dozens of studies and government investigations - many of which were conducted by supporters of voter ID requirements - that showed vanishingly small amounts of fraud.
You have also cited made-up statistics (99.9%) and numbers (1,071 fraudulent votes) that sound scary, but end up being insignificant in terms of actually impacting elections.
Unless you can provide evidence of widespread fraud changing a state-level or federal election - which I've asked for since my very first comment - I'm no longer willing to discuss this with you.
You however claim that there is none. A lack of evidence from a lack of measurement does not mean your narrative must be true. I'm asking questions seeking the truth. You are blindly following a political narrative while dismissing any questioning.
You cited a few articles that only focus on voter ID which isn't the only type of fraud (remember the 4 year investigation into Russian interference?). Also that 11% stat is unsourced and just a quote in an article which discusses people who already had IDs and failed to keep them updated. It's not voter suppression if everyone has to do it. Do you think that having an ID for work or to drive is suppressing rights as well?
Can you answer the question I posed earlier about the overlap of people participating in society and but don't have ID? If it's such a problem then the answer should be easy.
It wouldn't help. Facebook and other social media outlets are geared to giving you more of what you click. Happen to click a few far Z-Wing posts? You'll get more. Once a pattern develops they feed you what you click most so that you'll stay engaged. No amount of high schooling will prepare people for that. The _only_ way to fight it is to actively disengage.
This is most certainly a problem Facebook created, however. Blaming the public for "not knowing how to use nukes better" while still building and cramming nukes in their inboxes is just ridiculous and it's time for this charade to end.
Also this doesn't help the majority of the population that is older than high school age.
Propaganda is done because it works.
Poor financial literacy = HS tax class
Misinformation on social media = HS propaganda class
Teens can't deal with their emotions = HS yoga class
Also we read Animal Farm and we talked about propaganda in history classes. Another class just for Facebook is not the solution.
It's pretty hard for anyone to be objective about any political issue, but for what it's worth I vote third party, so my opinion about this is as non-partisan as I think it can be. That disclaimer made, from a purely engineering perspective, mail-in voting doesn't seem very secure. The 2016 election was pretty close; it wouldn't take that many mistakes or deliberate malicious acts to sway the outcome, especially with no clear chain of custody over people's ballots.
Many states use electronic voting machines. These run unverified code, without verifiable paper receipts (IE a public database of all the votes + receipt numbers, against which individuals may check their votes, and from which the official tally is calculated). This also has no chain of custody. I would choose mail-in ballots over electronic vote systems every time.
From a purely engineering perspective, the fact is that it works and works well.
The simple solution of stating your name + address (or receiving a ballot addressed to you by mail) then having your name checked off the list when you return the ballot is friction-less, robust, and extremely difficult to attack at scale.
Over-engineering the system's security would most likely do more harm than good.
I know the US elections are pretty people centric, even though you are not allowed to vote the president directly. But if anyone could come up with an honest assessment of the problems the US is facing and offer some solutions or strategies, I think the chances to win are very high. You would have to beat building a wall towards Mexico.
Trumpers need to make peace with lefties and vice versa. Nobody will win otherwise anyway. I believe Biden will win the presidential election though. Not by merit perhaps, but because of demographic and inclination of voters.
If I recall the work of Democrats the last election cycle I see questionable FISA abuse and lying about Russia as the primary "achievements". I think there is room to do better.
What do I see when I look at Trump? I don't think he takes his presidency that seriously. He didn't kill minorities as some said he would.
Yeah, you are.
> He didn't kill minorities
Covid kills minorities at a far higher rate than the general population. His incompetence in handling the epidemic has killed minorities (it's killed a lot of people, but disproportionately minorities).[1]
1. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/05/30/8654130...
They seem insecure, but they are not insecure. That is the problem. The perception that public elections are vulnerable to massive voter fraud is what drives these conspiracy theories, not the reality.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/minuscule-number-of-...
I'm all for more mail in ballots, just saying.
Here's the formula:
1) Quickly gloss over any real examples of voter fraud. 2) Don't acknowledge prominent Democrat concerns with them only a couple years ago. 3) Don't give any time to real and recent examples. 4) Do throw around the words of people who worry about mail in ballots, carefully pointing out they're all Pro Trump, Anti Muslim activist, some other view point CNN/NYT tells you that you hate. 5) Don't acknowledge any of the ways mail in ballots are objectively weaker and easier to compromise.
Articles like this are themselves misinformation and propaganda.
2) I'm not arguing whether feigning concern is a political tactic, I'm arguing that vote by mail fraud a. exists, b. is so insignificant that it doesn't affect election outcomes, c. still needs to be combated because elections should be seen as irrefutably valid by all voters
3) You can read the facts about the example here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_North_Carolina%27s_9th_co...
4) Most voter misinformation on Facebook is perpetuated by Trump supporters according to the article.
5) I think all voters should be able to agree that elections, including voting by mail, should be as secure as possible. It seems that as of today, voting by mail is secure enough to warrant its use in general, and more specifically in our current situation where voting at in-person polling locations risks spreading Covid needlessly and would have a chilling effect on voters who fear they would contract Covid and die by visiting an in-person voting location. In fact, I would go so far to claim that the chilling effect from requiring all voting to take place in person during the Covid pandemic would distort the outcome of the election by magnitudes greater than what we would expect from even 10 or 100 times more vote by mail fraud than we have today. Forcing voters to risk their lives to cast their ballot disenfranchises them and is as reprehensible as their ballot being manipulated against their will.
It's so blatant in this article it's amazing anyone can avoid the feeling they're being manipulated.
I will freely admit that mail-in votes are far more likely--about 10×--to be involved in fraud than in-person voting. However, I will also point out that both cases of fraud are quite rare, and far less of an issue in practice than problems such as voter intimidation, voter access, and ballot design, which are known to have afflicted even the largest races in the country (the 2000 presidential election being perhaps the most famous race to have its results altered as a result of poor ballot design).
My reading of the situation as it happened is that voting by mail wasn’t secure and led to a situation in which an election wasn’t valid. Do you read it differently?
Conspiracy theory...what a convenient dismissal of a potentially genuine problem. All of our institutions are rife with abuse but we're supposed to believe voter fraud doesn't exist because WAPO says it doesn't and, more importantly, because Trump said it does...
Edit: and they apparently looked at 3 states. Unqualified journalists should stay away from statistics or "fact checking" - at this point they are actively harming society with their piss poor, agenda driven "analyses".
Those are the 3 biggest states of the 5 that use primarily vote by mail. They contain ~80% of the vote by mail population.
Oh I see, well, clearly, if officials aren't reporting on it then it's not happening. Wapo and blue check marks make it official.
This logic isn't sound but people are happy to swallow hole anything anti-trump.
Edit: not to mention Colorado, Washington, and Oregon probably don't harbor anywhere near the same number of illegal immigrants as do states like California and Texas where this would be more of a concern.
In fact this whole debate is framed illegitimately. States like California automatically register voters when they receive IDs, they allow noncitizens of any legal status to obtain IDs, and we're supposed to pretend this isn't an avenue for illegal voting? Who's going to report these votes if they ostensibly conform to the California rules? But don't worry, Wapo and Huffpo will run their "analyses" and everything will come back squeaky clean.
We all need to hold all of our sources accountable and examine them critically, even when they tell us what we want to hear.
Citation required. The California DMV's own website utterly contradicts what you say:
"The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is permitted to issue a driver license (DL) or identification card (ID) to an applicant who submits satisfactory proof that the applicant’s presence in the United States (U.S.) is authorized under federal law...DMV will not let you start a DL/ID card application unless you present your social security number (SSN) and your valid BD (birthdate)/LP (legal presence) document...DMV will mail your photo DL/ID card after all tests and requirements have been met and USCIS has verified your legal presence status. "[1]
On a personal level, I know friends who suddenly couldn't drive because their visa expired, even though they were still in legal status while they awaited renewal. Because their license was set to expire the same day as the visa/I94. That's how hard-assed they are about it. (Btw, that's an additional non-citizen "tax" - having to renew your driver's license every 2-3 years, instead of 5 years like a citizen or permanent resident).
So definitely people without legal status can't register to vote this way. How many people with legal status do you think are going to try doing this? Like they went to all this trouble to come to the US legally, and now they'll commit a crime that has very little payoff for them personally and very high risk if they're caught? Remember these are people with a legal presence: they have jobs, USCIS knows where they live, they've been fingerprinted when applying for a visa, they're in the system. Are there FB/WhatsApp groups of non-citizens in legal status coordinating this stuff? Has anyone been arrested for this? Surely if it's going on for so long and at such a scale someone should have been caught right?
Where are your sources?
1. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/driver-education-and-safety/ed...
>Some 605,000 undocumented immigrants who live in California were granted driver’s licenses in 2015...took effect on January 2, 2015...(DMV) expects a total of about 1.4 million people will get their license under the law by late 2017.
And here's the fun part
>That announcement renewed interest in another California law, the “New Motor Voter Act,” which was passed in October 2015. The combination of these two acts, one allowing undocumented residents to obtain driver’s licenses, the other automatically registering citizens to vote when obtaining driver’s licenses, sparked fears (which have been periodically resurrected for more than a decade) that California was allowing undocumented residents to vote.
Oh, but don't worry, because as you also indirectly point out:
>The law requires that applicants under the Motor Voter Act attest that they meet all voter registration requirements, but critics maintain that the law “lacks the necessary safeguards to keep noncitizens off the voter rolls.”
Which is a winded way of saying these illegal immigrants are bound by their honor to opt out of voter registration and/or not go out and use their IDs [and default registration] to vote.
So despite the downvotes, I'm not the one who has fallen victim to propaganda here. And the same incentive responsible for this kind of blatantly incorrect citogenesis gives cause to people to risk illegally voting against a man who has been painted by this same media as a literal far right white supremacist. And what risk is there, when media and fact check outlets create citations which allow politicians to claim that this isn't a problem, while potentially benefiting from it?
Also I don't appreciate that you've conflated legal and illegal immigration, though in both cases there is clearly potential for abuse. Under Cuomo a similar motor voter law was passed by the way. The Wapo "study" is intentionally myopic.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/california-motor-voter-act...
"Potential voters “have to demonstrate proof of age, the vast majority of time people are showing a birth certificate or a passport, which also reflects citizenship. That’s arguably more secure than someone checking a box under penalty of perjury."
Even people without legal status applying for a license or ID have to provide something to identify themselves. If that's not a US birth certificate or passport, it's pretty obvious they aren't citizens and they can't be registered. Stop debating in hypotheticals. Show actual proof of fraud happening at a meaningful scale.
But if we are registering people who should not be voting, that's one less safeguard, and now we are relying solely on the good faith of the people at the booths and the illegal/ineligible immigrants who shouldn't be voting.
At what point are you willing to admit that this is a glaring loophole and an opportunity for massive scale abuse? Are we really just going to blanket dismiss any attempt at securing this system as "voter disenfranchisement"?
Illegal immigrants should not be registered to vote. Period. That's halfway to voter fraud - not to mention that there are other types of voter fraud which are being deliberately conflated.
They're not. Period.
>the “New Motor Voter Act,” which was passed in October 2015. The combination of these two acts, one allowing undocumented residents to obtain driver’s licenses, the other automatically registering citizens to vote when obtaining driver’s licenses, sparked fears (which have been periodically resurrected for more than a decade) that California was allowing undocumented residents to vote.
So there is no question that they are registered to vote. The remaining argument is whether they are sufficiently prevent from voting after being automatically registered (failing to opt out by accident or choice.)
"How will the DMV system ensure only U.S. Citizens are registered to vote?
State law prohibits DMV from sending information for AB 60 applicants (undocumented driver license applicants) to the Secretary of State. For other applicants, state law requires each person to declare, under penalty of perjury, that they meet all voter eligibility requirements, including citizenship."[1]
If you're undocumented, the DMV already knows this fact and they're forbidden from sending your info to the Secretary of State. So undocumented people can't be registered to vote via the DMV, even if they don't tick the "Opt-out" box on the form (whether through negligence or malice).
If you're documented, it's perjury and voter fraud - very serious crimes for someone trying to stay legal and very easy to uncover with a simple query on the DMV database, joined with voter rolls to see who voted.
Again, do you have any proof of any of what you're alleging actually happening in the real world? I've already shown you your hypothetical scenario is nearly impossible and easy to investigate, yet you're trying to convince yourself and everyone else that "illegals vote in large numbers". Facts don't care about your feelings.
1. https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/motor-voter/general-info.pd...
Not once have I said anything like this. I've been trying to show that it's a valid concern.
>tate law prohibits DMV from sending information for AB 60 applicants (undocumented driver license applicants) to the Secretary of State. For other applicants, state law requires each person to declare, under penalty of perjury, that they meet all voter eligibility requirements, including citizenship.
It took some 15 comments and multiple sources before this safeguard was posted - it's not even on the Snopes page. Don't presume I'm arguing in bad faith or dismiss my arguments as "feelings" just because I disagree with you. This is the only snippet in your entire argument that actually prevents illegals from being registered to vote, which was my entire point of contention. Penalties don't matter if no one is enforcing them.
And finally, once again, I'm not suggesting that proof of fraud exists, or is easy to find - what I am saying is that Wapo's laughable absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
You're right, and I apologize. It's a long and heated comment thread :-)
> I've been trying to show that it's a valid concern.
Are you at least somewhat more convinced now that these "concerns" are really more about casting doubts on the validity of California's elections? And on automatic registration in general? Because the facts are that undocumented people aren't registered to vote when they get a license or ID, even if they try to.
> It took some 15 comments and multiple sources before this safeguard was posted - it's not even on the Snopes page.
Agreed. It took me some digging to find the exact source too, and I'm surprised Snopes didn't have it. It should have been right at the top of the article.
> Penalties don't matter if no one is enforcing them.
If there was something to find, there would be enforcement. I've already shown that it isn't hard to find evidence of wrongdoing. Why aren't state or federal prosecutors going after them?
Second, they looked at 3 states out of 50. Yes I understand that's where the majority of mail in voting happens currently. That's about to change.
Third, they ignored states with larger populations of illegal immigrants.
Fourth, they ignored opt out motor voter laws which, combined with laws which give illegals drivers licenses (in at least 2 states currently) and automatically register them to vote unless they opt out.
Long story short, wapo found what it wanted find, consumers read what they wanted to read.
[0] https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/commentary/new-r...
[1] https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/19-foreign-nationals-indic...
If you really want to look at the issue, you need to approach it like a security audit. What is your threat model? What are the failure modes? What are the ways that there can be fraud without setting off red flags.
Right off the bat, an issue with all-mail elections is coercion, and suppression. If the ballots all arrive in the mail at the house, someone can use coercion to make sure all the ballots are filled out as they wish. This is much harder to do in person.
And that vulnerability popped up with less than a minute of thought. If approached from a security perspective, I am sure others would pop up.
Now, after serious analysis, it may be concluded that the benefits outweigh the risks, but a serious analysis needs to be done.