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Krieger22 Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018 from Malaysia Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: I'm in love with my car
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
#144926: Oct 19th 2016 at 7:17:43 AM

So after some guys who have attempted voter suppression and went to prison for it explained that Trump's idea of voter fraud isn't how it works, time for the Washington Post's explanation for why it's basically impossible.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, behind in the polls, has started claiming that the election will be stolen from him because it is “rigged.” When Trump talks about the election being stolen from him, he seems to be referring to a range of issues, from voter fraud to the media being allied against him. He also said this week that he expects more than a million “deceased individuals” to vote against him.

These claims have the potential to resonate with many Americans who already question the integrity of this country’s elections. A September Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 46 percent of registered voters believe that electoral fraud happens at least somewhat often.

But stealing an election in this country isn’t easy. In fact, experts say it’s nearly impossible given how voting works. And documented instances of voter fraud are actually very rare. Wendy R. Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said the rate of fraud is smaller than the rate of Americans being struck by lightning.

Below, we explain why rigging an election is so unlikely.

What would rigging an election actually entail?

Rigging an election would require a widespread, nationwide effort with the two major parties colluding at every level. This is why election law experts say it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to “rig” an election. In this country, voting is an open, multi-step process with scores of witnesses from both parties each step of the way.

Chris Ashby, campaign finance and election lawyer at Virginia-based Ashby Law, points out that American elections are held in open, public rooms, such as school gyms, community centers and community centers.

“There are no back rooms, secret doors or hidden hallways,” Ashby wrote recently. The ballots, voting machines and election materials are locked and sealed when they arrive in the voting place, and when they are removed after the election is over, they are locked and sealed again.

In most states, there are “poll observers” in each county who have been chosen and trained by both the Republican and Democratic parties to watch for problems or efforts to disenfranchise voters during the voting process. The poll observers are allowed to watch the poll workers and other election officials, who have also undergone training to run the polling places and help conduct the election.

Voters use equipment that is publicly tested and observed by party representatives and representatives of the campaigns, Ashby said. After it’s tested, voting equipment is locked and sealed.

“Rigging” an election would require the cooperation of the Republicans and Democrats who are the polling place election officials, along with the poll watchers from each party who are watching the election officials conduct the election, Ashby said. It would also require, he points out, the cooperation of the another group of Republicans and Democrats after the election who are watching the counting of ballots.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who is running for reelection, said during a debate this week that Trump should stop saying the election is being rigged. “We have 67 counties in this state, each of which conduct their own elections. I promise you there is not a 67-county conspiracy to rig this election,” he said, pointing out that Republicans control many of the positions that oversee ballots and monitor results. “There is no evidence behind any of this. . . . He should stop saying that.”

The FBI released a statement Tuesday saying that agents work with federal, state and local officials to ensure a fair election process. “The FBI takes allegations of election-related violations of federal law seriously and encourages citizens to call their local field office to report an election crime,” the statement said.

How do I know that the votes are being counted fairly?

Every jurisdiction has multiple overlapping systems in place to ensure fair vote counts, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.

After voting is over in each polling place, representatives for the political parties and the candidates literally watch the election officials count the votes. They also later participate in what is called a public canvass where the election results are gone over again to make sure they are right.

“The outcome of the election is not official until the canvass is finished, sometimes several weeks after Election Day. The purpose of the canvass is to account for every ballot cast and ensure that every valid vote cast is included in the election totals,” according to the bipartisan federal Election Assistance Commission. “This involves accounting for every absentee ballot, every early voting ballot, every ballot cast on Election Day, every provisional ballot, every changed ballot and every overseas and military ballot.”

Richard L. Hasen, an election-law expert at the University of California at Irvine and the author of “The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown,” said that counting votes at county offices and other places is “a transparent act with Republicans, Democrats and good government groups watching the counting.”

“When voting anomalies occur, generally because of human error, they are quickly caught and publicized on Twitter, and then corrected,” Hasen wrote this week in an article in Slate. “Most election administrators doing the tabulating and reporting are dedicated public servants who want the process to be as transparent as possible to promote public confidence.”

Are there actually a lot of dead people voting?

No. Weiser says she often hears the claim that there are hordes of dead people voting but that this has been debunked repeatedly.

“There have been a handful of cases where votes have been cast in the name of dead people, and those have typically been minuscule in scale (like someone voting in the name of his or her recently deceased spouse) or involved ballot-box stuffing by unscrupulous election insiders,” Weiser said in an email.

She added: “There has been no incident in over a century in which people were able to impact an election by mobilizing fraudsters to impersonate dead people at the polls.”

Deceased voters, just like people who move, do linger on the voter rolls, as the Pew Center on the States has documented, Weiser said. But to address that problem, she said that voter registration systems need to be modernized.

How hard is it to vote more than once in a presidential election?

Extremely hard, according to election experts. Hasen said there is “zero evidence” this kind of fraud has occurred regularly and that you would to have vote multiple times on a massive scale to influence the election.

Hasen said that the only recent instance he knows involving multiple voting concerned a supporter of Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and other Wisconsin Republicans.

“This man registered and voted about a dozen times in a few elections in multiple jurisdictions,” Hasen said. “He was caught and literally pleaded insanity, because such a plan is literally insane.”

Is there any evidence of widespread voter fraud with people impersonating others?

In one of the most comprehensive studies on voter fraud, Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt, who is now the deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, found only 31 incidents of voter impersonation out of more than a billion ballots cast between 2000 and 2014. “Usually, only a tiny portion of the claimed illegality is substantiated — and most of the remainder is either nothing more than speculation or has been conclusively debunked,” Levitt wrote.

The Government Accountability Office concluded in a report to Congress that the Justice Department had found “no apparent cases of in-person voter impersonation . . . anywhere in the United States, from 2004 through July 3, 2014.”

Judge Richard Posner, a conservative judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, said “besides the risks to the politicians, think of how much it would cost to orchestrate an effective voter impersonation fraud, given the number of voters who must be bribed, and in amounts generous enough to overcome their fear of being detected.”

I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot
TheHandle United Earth from Stockholm Since: Jan, 2012 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
United Earth
#144927: Oct 19th 2016 at 7:17:44 AM

[up]What about Civil Servants, though? How do these work in relation to elected officials?

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
BestOf FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC! from Finland Since: Oct, 2010 Relationship Status: Falling within your bell curve
FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC!
#144928: Oct 19th 2016 at 7:18:14 AM

If Obama had lost his presidential bid, he'd probably be a prominent senator a la Elizabeth Warren... or John Mc Cain, for that matter. Not necessarily holding an official leadership position within the Senate (like Majority/Minority Leader), but still a household name, at least.

Isn't that basically what I said?

Obviously he'd be a fairly senior figure in the Democrat party and famous because of that, but by 2010 he wouldn't have been the primary topic of conversation even when people were talking specifically about the Democrats.

downballet races

I know this is just a typo, but I'm having fun imagining what a ballet race is, and how it changes when it's a downballet race.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#144929: Oct 19th 2016 at 7:18:57 AM

@Ogodei: Congress demonstrably gets more work done when it's staffed by old hands than waves of new blood, because the new blood gums up the system with its insistence on no-compromise, ideologically pure actions while at the same time being uniquely vulnerable to predation by the lobbyist class, who are happy to greet them with satchels of cash and file folders full of boilerplate legislation.

Ultimately, though, the fundamental argument against term limits is that it suborns the will of the voters, who, presumably, should be the ones to decide if a particular Congresscritter stays or goes.

edited 19th Oct '16 7:19:11 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#144930: Oct 19th 2016 at 7:19:18 AM

All term limits will do is cause seismic shifts in how Congress operates for no damn reason other than to bring new people into the government. Unless the entry of new congressmen is heavily staggered, we would have a situation where something like sixty representatives of a party are suddenly locked out of holding office, triggering chaos in lawmaking. Legislation typically takes multiple sessions of Congress to become policy, and having entire cohorts of representatives just flat out disappear midway through governing, without any real mandate from the public, will just make lawmaking even harder.

The case for the presidency is rather a different story, since they're elected indirectly and make bureaucratic and judicial appointments outside the power of the public to influence, necessitating that their terms of office be limited so that their influence over unelected organs of government not become excessive.

edited 19th Oct '16 7:21:32 AM by CrimsonZephyr

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#144931: Oct 19th 2016 at 7:20:03 AM

Something that's been bothering me, not just about these emails, but in general, the attitude that politicians aren't allowed to have or voice private thoughts, in private, like normal human beings.

The Handle's post on the last page back about her making a few annoyed remarks and going "fuck her and anyone who voted for her" kind of gets to the head of it.

I don't just mean disagree with what they say, but acting like it's some shadowy business that they bother to say it or vent.

edited 19th Oct '16 7:30:25 AM by LSBK

AngelusNox Warder of the damned from The guard of the gates of oblivion Since: Dec, 2014 Relationship Status: Married to the job
Warder of the damned
#144932: Oct 19th 2016 at 7:22:15 AM

I am a bit late to the party so, here are the full quotes.

“You know, I’m not into it for that,” Clinton told the audience. “My view is I want to defend natural gas. I want to defend repairing and building the pipelines we need to fuel our economy. I want to defend fracking under the right circumstances. . . . I want to defend this stuff.”

One of the people who asked Clinton questions at the meeting disparagingly declared that “environmental extremists are the Democrats’ version of the Tea Party.”

At the meeting, Clinton also said she didn’t “particularly care” about the environmental justice activists who opposed her, according to the leaked transcript. “I’m already at odds with the most organized and wildest,” she told the audience at the Sept. 9, 2015, meeting. “They come to my rallies and they yell at me and, you know, all the rest of it. They say, ‘Will you promise never to take any fossil fuels out of the earth ever again?’ No. I won’t promise that. Get a life.”

Clinton continued: “I’m having conversations in these town halls and these meetings I’m having with a lot of people who break into my meetings, they hold up posters, they scream at me, and all the rest of that: ‘Stop extracting fossil fuels, stop extracting on public lands, come out against nuclear, coal’ you name it. They are after everything and I’m just talking through them. And of course they go support somebody else. That’s fine and I don’t particularly care.”

So much crying over nothing.

What did you expect her to do? Tell them "Oh no you poor babies you're right, we need to adopt a totally unrealistic and unfeasible energy policy, love the Earth and shit.". Good, the isn't defending the stupid and extreme militants in the Left like Jill has been doing, she showed she wanted a compromise with environmentalists and the XL pipeline, not to cave in for either side because that would be stupid.

edited 19th Oct '16 7:30:51 AM by AngelusNox

Inter arma enim silent leges
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#144933: Oct 19th 2016 at 7:22:53 AM

The Handle: There are specific laws governing how civil servants enter and leave their jobs precisely to prevent incoming administrations from firing the entire bureaucracy and installing their own cronies. This happened a few times in American history before people wised up and realized what a terrible idea it was.

[up] Yeah, I see nothing damning in her statements there, just a repudiation of the extreme left that wants to instantly ban all fossil fuels (and, presumably, take all our cars and throw them in dumps so we can bicycle to and from our jobs and schools and whatnot). In other words, idiots.

edited 19th Oct '16 7:25:06 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#144934: Oct 19th 2016 at 7:23:10 AM

[up]x3: Well, that's not a new idea. It's discussed in Plato's Republic — essentially, one a person becomes a public official, no part of them is really off-limits and "private," anymore.

edited 19th Oct '16 7:23:29 AM by CrimsonZephyr

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
Zendervai Since: Oct, 2009
#144935: Oct 19th 2016 at 7:25:25 AM

Yeah, people were giving her crap for the "public face/private face" thing, but literally everyone does that. Everyone puts on different faces and attitudes when talking to different people. It's actually a mostly unconscious thing. It's especially hypocritical when the Republicans do it, and hypocritical to an almost insane level when Trump does it. The Republicans will either flip flop repeatedly or refuse to change their opinions even though they're being proven wrong at every angle, and it's usually the same people doing both.

But here's the thing with Hillary Clinton. From everything we've seen, she's remarkably consistent when you compare the faces.

LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#144936: Oct 19th 2016 at 7:26:42 AM

[up][up]Maybe, but as we see with sex scandals or going to a strip club once, that doesn't mean everything is deserves the same scrutiny.

And I don't count, "occasionally isn't entirely civil when voicing disagreements with opponents" as deserving of particular scrutiny.

edited 19th Oct '16 7:37:43 AM by LSBK

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#144938: Oct 19th 2016 at 7:49:15 AM

Here's the thing, between the butler and the massage therapist there's a partner of Trump's staff basically being in on him committing sexual assault, sooner or later someone is going to track down one of Trump's staff and start asking them awkward questions. Now odds are they would deny everything and defend Trump, but if they either play dumb or refuse to answer it could be daming, and that's assuming that none of them have grown a conscious over the years.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#144939: Oct 19th 2016 at 8:19:01 AM

Ultimately, though, the fundamental argument against term limits is that it suborns the will of the voters, who, presumably, should be the ones to decide if a particular Congresscritter stays or goes.
This argument could be also made for the whole "repeal the 22nd amendment" thing. How come it's good for Congresspeople but not for the POTUS?

edited 19th Oct '16 8:20:01 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
megarockman from The Sixth Borough (Experienced Trainee)
#144940: Oct 19th 2016 at 8:21:31 AM

One makes the laws and there's 535 of them. The other executes the laws and there's ultimately only one.

The damned queen and the relentless knight.
Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#144941: Oct 19th 2016 at 8:25:08 AM

POTUS has far more influence than any one Senator or Congressperson, letting them stay in for too long is considered a threat to democratic values, etc.

Also, the job kills you and letting someone do it for more than 8 years is probably an OSHA violation.tongue

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#144942: Oct 19th 2016 at 8:28:14 AM

So Clinton said something totally harmless and the hard left is once again freaking out. What else is new.

Oh, and a newsflash to Handle and all those like him—if you didn't want Clinton running you should have come up with a more palatable candidate than Bernie Sanders. Obama proved you can beat "the Clinton machine" or whatever ludicrous term you want to apply to her campaign. You just have to be a competent campaigner and Sanders wasn't.

Elle Since: Jan, 2001
#144943: Oct 19th 2016 at 8:28:50 AM

There are more documented cases of an executive ruler consolidating power and becoming tyrannical over the years. Eodagon, Putin - although Russia does have term limits they're only on consecutive terms and the guy who suceeded him from 2008 to 2012 was basically a puppet - were both were initially elected fairly and continue to be so legally (though with growing suspicion).

As for Congress, I know it's been said but yeah, what really needs to be tackled first is gerrymandering.

edited 19th Oct '16 8:31:35 AM by Elle

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#144944: Oct 19th 2016 at 8:30:17 AM

[up][up] Nevada was not their best moment.

Disgusted, but not surprised
megarockman from The Sixth Borough (Experienced Trainee)
#144945: Oct 19th 2016 at 8:31:48 AM

Iowa's I understand to be a good model for anti-gerrymandering.

The damned queen and the relentless knight.
CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#144946: Oct 19th 2016 at 8:39:01 AM

"This argument could be also made for the whole "repeal the 22nd amendment" thing. How come it's good for Congresspeople but not for the POTUS?"

1.) The Presidency isn't as sensitive to democracy as individual congressmen who answer to roughly 700,000 people each and are directly elected by them at each election. The electoral college is structured such that a presidential candidate can win elections by capturing as little as 40% of the vote, and in the case of a hung college, are not popularly elected, period.

2.) The President appoints unelected bureaucrats that form the leadership of the executive department, as well as judges who generally serve for life. There needs to be a check on the president's incredible ability to effect changes in the government that don't require regular public endorsement. Congressmen are our direct representatives, and therefore we're somewhat complicit in the legislation that they enact. That can't really be said for the President, whose department is a Vast Bureaucracy where we aren't actually sure of the jobs of many of the middle management.

edited 19th Oct '16 8:40:46 AM by CrimsonZephyr

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
Ramidel Since: Jan, 2001
#144947: Oct 19th 2016 at 8:40:51 AM

Re: Alaska: Alaska is a bridge farther than Texas. We don't face the weight of immigrant votes.

Plus, whichever way Alaska votes for President, our Senator and Representative are not going anywhere. Both Young and Murkowski are essentially ignoring Trump and it isn't hurting them a bit - the Alaska Republican Party is a fiefdom unto itself.

AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#144948: Oct 19th 2016 at 8:42:06 AM

I love the idiotic meme on the hard right and hard left alike that insists that Clinton will start a nuclear war with Russia and that only Trump can save us.

Apparently these morons all missed Trump's pondering why he isn't allowed to use nuclear weapons in Europe. Yeah, he won't start anything with Russia. Instead he'll get you all nuked by the goddamn French.

But apparently that's somehow preferable. Personally I would think it shouldn't matter whether the missiles are Russian or have "Fuck you, monsieur" scrawled on the side, but maybe that's just me.

edited 19th Oct '16 8:53:31 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

smokeycut Since: Mar, 2013
#144949: Oct 19th 2016 at 8:47:10 AM

@Hillary supposedly bashing Sanders a year ago: So what? I've said shit about people a week ago that I didn't mean. When you're in competition against someone, you're liable to say rude shit. Especially when you're running for president.

Plus, we're in no way "stuck" with Hillary. She's one of, if not the, most qualified candidates in US history. She'd be an incredible president.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#144950: Oct 19th 2016 at 8:49:57 AM

[up] I am in full agreement with this. Congressional obstruction aside, Hillary Clinton is a wonderful candidate for President; possibly the best we've had in decades.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

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