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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

and also cast fraudulent votes in support of Myers’ preferred candidates on behalf of voters she knew would not or did not physically appear at the polls.

Obviously, I believe this actually happened. But: how? What is Philadelphia not doing that we do in Chicago? You couldn't do this here; it's hard for me to even imagine how someone could walk into a precinct and cast multiple votes. And how would they cast their second and third vote? Do you give them a list of no-show registrations from the precinct? And then they just sign the pollbook multiple times?

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I was a machine operator in the 2020 election in Philadelphia. It’s as you describe, everyone there (4-6 people) have to sign off at the end of the night on the totals. Two people are specifically one from each of the major parties, so it should be bipartisan. The numbers from the machine have to add up to the number of voters in the book. You’d need multiple accomplices to hide the mismatch, at least three people I think? Even then, you’d have to write down the names of who “voted” so it could come to light if any of those voters checked and saw that they had an unexpected vote. The machines did change so it may have been easier before.

And further if these people were apparently also telling voters who to vote for, then they must have had all the election officials there in on it. Supporting a candidate like that is absolutely not allowed for the poll workers so this was blatant and didn’t care about whether it was uncovered. Any voter could have reported that behavior at any point. It was done out in the open.

Unless you're checking IDs, yeah - a single person could drop in a dozen signatures that all look different enough to fool a poll taker. I don't see how you're so incredulous here - a person with access to ballots filled them out and literally stuffed them in a box, it's not difficult!

They can't just make people up. They need to have the name and address of the registered voter who's voting.

They can't just re-vote at the same precinct. The EJs will absolutely notice a person coming in and voting more than once. If that gets noticed a single time, the EJ calls the sheriff (in Cook County, at least).

It takes, like, best case, 10-15 minutes to vote in a precinct. There are lines!

How many votes can you cast this way? 10? 20?

I'm not saying you couldn't manage to cast a fraudulent vote by doing this. I'm saying that your odds of influencing the election by doing it, while at the same time not guaranteeing you end up in prison for trying, are so low that my mind boggles that anyone would try.

> They can't just make people up. They need to have the name and address of the registered voter who's voting.

To quote further up:

> and also cast fraudulent votes in support of Myers’ preferred candidates on behalf of voters she knew would not or did not physically appear at the polls.

And:

> They can't just re-vote at the same precinct. The EJs will absolutely notice a person coming in and voting more than once. If that gets noticed a single time, the EJ calls the sheriff (in Cook County, at least).

From the article:

> Beren, who was charged separately and pleaded guilty in October 2021, was the de facto Judge of Elections and effectively ran the polling places in her division by installing close associates to serve as members of the Board of Elections.

The election judge was the one doing this, didn't have to get past anyone.

There isn't one election judge. There's a team of 4-5 of them.

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