Hacker News Reader

Comment by IncRnd | Hacker News Reader

> There are basically three kinds of voter fraud: in-person voter fraud, mail-in voter fraud, and outright ballot stuffing.

Yea, that's not exactly a complete list. One example is undercounting. Another is changing people's party affiliation, so they cannot vote in primaries.

You tried to simplify the far more extensive and comprehensive list of types of voter fraud into a list of categories. In doing so you removed all actionable information from the threat types. What you did is similar to saying that all computer hacks are remote or local. They are, but so what? That isn't actionable, because it removes all the actual descriptive information.

View on HN

> Yea, that's not exactly a complete list. One example is undercounting. Another is changing people's party affiliation, so they cannot vote in primaries.

The first example I'd call "ballot stuffing"--it's really a catchall term for shenanigans around turning the actual returned ballots into an official count. This even would cover things like poor ballot design (e.g., butterfly ballots in Florida's elections) that aren't strictly speaking fraud.

The latter example is a fourth category of electoral shenanigans that I'd loosely term voter intimidation; essentially any mechanism by which people are dissuaded from casting a ballot in the first place, which I omitted because most of this category is unfortunately legal.

> In doing so you removed all actionable information from the threat types. What you did is similar to saying that all computer hacks are remote or local. They are, but so what? That isn't actionable, because it removes all the actual descriptive information.

No it's not. While it's true that the ballot stuffing category does contain a rather disparate list of potential frauds, they're all almost entirely solvable by auditing and oversight of the physical process of counting ballots. And more stringent checks on who can cast ballots (which strict id laws purport to be) don't affect it one whit. A more specific look at how to fix an election might dive into the details more, but grouping them in one category doesn't really affect the analysis here.

> The first example I'd call "ballot stuffing"--it's really a catchall term for shenanigans around turning the actual returned ballots into an official count. This even would cover things like poor ballot design (e.g., butterfly ballots in Florida's elections) that aren't strictly speaking fraud

You can call it ballot stuffing, but you are inventing your own definition when you do that.

"Ballot stuffing or ballot box stuffing is a form of electoral fraud in which a greater number of ballots are cast than the number of people who legitimately voted. The term refers generally to the act of casting illegal votes or submitting more than one ballot per voter when only one ballot per voter is permitted." [1]

> The latter example is a fourth category of electoral shenanigans that I'd loosely term voter intimidation; essentially any mechanism by which people are dissuaded from casting a ballot in the first place, which I omitted because most of this category is unfortunately legal.

That is absolutely not voter intimidation. I had my registration changed by someone who did this, so I am well aware of what happens here. I was not intimidated. [2] Voter intimidation is a federal crime and defined in the Civil Rigts Act and the Hatch Act.

> A more specific look at how to fix an election might dive into the details more, but grouping them in one category doesn't really affect the analysis here.

It absolutely does affect the analysis. You should be able to see that, since I pointed out two specific threats that your categories didn't cover. There are more, too. You cannot properly model threats unless you identify the actors, the vulnerability, how the vulnerability can get exploited, and some sort of analysis. You need to create a model of risks, not just pronounce "There are basically three kinds of voter fraud" using an incorrect, incomplete list. If you don't model risks, how do you know your categories are correct? THat's like when Oracle called itself, "Unbreakable". [3] [4]

  [1] https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_stuffing
  [2] https://ballotpedia.org/Intimidation_of_voters
  [3] https://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240043867/Ellison-Oracle-is-unbreakable
  [4] https://www.cnet.com/news/oracle-unbreakable-no-more/

> It absolutely does affect the analysis.

The analysis is why strict voter ID laws didn't have an effect on actual or perceived voter fraud. So tell me why distinguishing undercounting matters for that analysis.

> Another is changing people's party affiliation, so they cannot vote in primaries.

Aren't the primary elections the business of the parties conducting them and not really part of the democratic process at all, but rather a way for parties to find their favorite candidate to put up for the real election? In that case, it doesn't matter for voting rights if a party excludes someone from their own election, does it?

> Aren't the primary elections the business of the parties conducting them and not really part of the democratic process at all

That's the ideal but not the real-world truth, where the parties are entangled with the legal process. If a person leaves one of the major parties, it is almost impossible for them to be recognized legally as a candidate for a presidential election. That's one of the reasons why you get Communists and Centrists in the same political party. The can't possibly ascribe to the same party platform, yet they are members of the same party.

I don't understand. There have been independent candidates, haven't there? Doesn't that show that they don't have to belong to either major party?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com