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Notes -
A massive electoral fraud scandal in Puerto Rico has been revealed in Propublica today.
The TL;DR is that a gang was sneaking drugs into a prison, and exchanging those drugs with addicts in return for votes for the governor (Puerto Rico being one of the few places that lets current jailed felons vote). Federal investigators were planning an indictment against the gang, prison guards involved, and the prisoners who took the deal before orders from above in the upper echelons of government shut it down.
But there's a twist you might not expect, the votes were for the Republican governor and the higher ups who shut it down was the Trump admin. This might be the biggest this you style story yet. Trump is constantly claiming about stolen elections and voter fraud, and yet little evidence has ever shown up. We finally found a massive scheme, and it was a MAGA related plan. There is no direct connection with this plot to Trump or the governor, but the gang leaders did have some personal connections to the governor.
The scheme probably wasn't enough to secure the election (at least not with the inmates alone) as the numbers aren't, but it was closer than you might guess. Thus even with a relatively massive scandal, it probably didn't have a direct impact then but it's interesting how the investigation was spiked.
Erick Erickson (conservative radio host/podcaster) posted something interesting earlier that seems applicable here.
Perhaps Trump's focus on electoral fraud is not motivated by being against fraud, but instead just because he lost in 2020 and can't accept that hit to his ego, the shattering mythology of his victimhood, and that's why they won't push this Puerto Rico case further?
Sounds like there's plenty of election fraud to go around, the fact that both parties have not colluded yet to make ID mandatory for voting and outlawed mail-in-ballots tells you everything you need to know.
Also there exist unfalsifiable yet anonymous algorithms for digital vote counting where you could be sure your vote was part of the count via a hash, but your own vote preference can't be revealed. The fact these "democratic" systems are still relying on pen and paper and corruptible people counting ballots by hand tells you everything you need to know about "democracy", it's a scam.
Unfalsifiable in theory, but with the tech illiterate masses, incompetent state officials, and messy reality, my understanding is that in-person voting, paper ballots, and manual counting with lots of redundancy is still the most reliable method. Oops. Cryptographers cancel election results after losing decryption key.
If mail-in ballots are outlawed, there should be an alternative for sick citizens, and citizens abroad like soldiers.
I see no issues with free and easy-to-get mandatory ID. I believe it's common in Europe and almost nobody complains.
Sometimes I wonder if we would be able to use the mathematics to make it easily verifiable without a computer somehow. Even if it takes you a day of filling up some puzzle paperwork.
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