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Comment by drocer88 | Hacker News Reader

John F. Kennedy used this trick: https://www.politico.com/gallery/2012/06/16-worst-political-...

Note the two "Joseph Russo" entries on the ballot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_history_of_John_F._K...

Barack Obama won his first election using a different procedural trick — he looked up his three opponents' ballot petitions, and challenged enough of the signatures on the petitions that they were all delisted.

Not sure why you're being downvoted, because what you said is 100% true: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2007-04-04-070403...

Your link redirects me to chicagotribune.com/. Maybe only works for subscribers?

Interesting. I'm definitely not a subscriber, so that's not the issue.

Link worked for me, not a subscriber.

Same, maybe it's µblock Origin that fixes it? I'm using mostly stock LibreWolf with its preinstalled µBO on a MSW 10 library computer (though btw AdNauseum is a better µBO fork).

I posted the obligatory archive.is link as a sibling comment.

The comment is upvoted now, but possibly the downvotes were for describing it as a "trick". One of the candidates they managed to interview admitted some signatures were forged for $5 each.

(The link opened fine for me.)

The interview says they paid someone for collecting signatures, not forging them. Of course at the price of $5 that might have been implicit at the time.

Non-paywall: https://archive.is/2Jyu2

If you want more information on this from former president Obama himself, read The Promise Land. He discusses this issue and he narrates the book.

This is done by literally every single campaign/organization.

The signature process is usually outsourced to people making $.25 a signature. And there is a HUGE amount of fraud. Even when checking against the voter file. Which BTW is public info for most places, which makes it easy to fill in 'correct' data.

This happens even on legitimate large campaigns with controls who do NOT want to cheat lest they get thrown off ballot. But hire enough field organizers some are bound to cheat.

That's why usually submit sometimes 2X the required number.

Honestly I feel like "unable to find field organizers who won't cheat" as a disqualifying characteristic... doesn't sound totally unreasonable.

What? Give me a break -- one is completely unlike the other.

Listing candidates to intentionally confuse voters is completely different than (correctly!) challenging the legitimacy of voter signatures. Calling the latter a "trick" is completely dishonest.

This whataboutism in America is exhausting.

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