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Comment by mmaurizi | Hacker News Reader

"Judge of Elections" in PA is an elected position for running the polling place for a precinct on election day. It's an extremely low-level position that only involves work on 2 days of the year.

It's not a "judge" in the sense someone who oversees a criminal or civil trial.

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I'm surprised it is even elected. I was an election judge when I was 18 in Illinois as part of high school project. You just sign up and attend a 2 hour class.

It was fun. The other judge at my poll location was a guy who served in the Wehrmacht during WWII (was conscripted at age 14).

But I easily could have stuffed the box. Most people don't vote. At 7:45pm, you could just vote for people who didn't show up. Nobody but the other judge would have the chance of stopping you.

There should be something stopping you; the voter rolls, and list of names that voted and not, are public. The press could absolutely contact a sample of the voter rolls and verify - "I voted", "I didn't". Any discrepancy (well, any time there's more than one or two, because people do lie or simply forget) should be a scandal.

There are people who did this for the 2020 elections. They found voters registered to empty lots all over Arizona. Steven Crowder, I think the guys name was.

Not sure on that specific claim, but every one of those type of "fraud claims" I've looked into turn out to be false and full of errors in how they used the information they had to try to prove their claims. An example from Arizona - not sure if the same one as Crowder, not going to watch YT videos on this topic - if it's important enough, write it up and publish it with references and proper proof that can be replicated.

https://www.azmirror.com/2021/09/10/voter-canvass-features-b...

And get rejected from publications that didn't bother to do the research themselves but "know" that Voter Fraud is a myth? No thanks.

Then you correctly get identified as a conspiracy theorist, the system is working.

The voter list should contain canaries and honeypots. Known dead people or fake people, and if they vote then fraud has been detected.

Clever idea. The problem, of course, is that this was never an issue that could be solved with more facts. Conspiracy theories are immune to that.

> But I easily could have stuffed the box.

...

> Nobody but the other judge would have the chance of stopping you.

Those ought to contradict each other. We have multiple judges for exactly this reason. It is a sincerely tall order to get even one other judge, especially when it's required to be from the opposing party, to agree to your ballot stuffing. You're likely to end up prosecuted the moment you pose the question, before you get anywhere near stuffing a box.

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