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Ehh, given that it’s LA (where a supermajority of primary votes can be presumed to go to one democrat or another; the fact a republican is competing at all is an anomaly over recent decades) and that democrats are significantly more likely than republicans to vote by mail, I don’t think it’s impossible that a batch of ~10k mail-in votes, especially if they came from the same neighborhood, could have zero for the republican. Unlikely, yes, but not impossible. A 1% chance isn’t zero chance. I admit it is Bayesian evidence toward fraud, but even putting aside possible misreporting my priors based on modern history are that electoral fraud in the US really is minimal. Incompetence rather than malice.
Anyway, this is exactly why I think some common sense vote-counting reform is so important. We should not be able to have this conversation in a first-world democracy. It is at best a pathetic embarrassment. The mail-in postmark deadline should be set several days before the election date, with at most a one-day grace period for late arrivals. My understanding is that most states, including blue states, pretty much do it this way already anyway without issue.
Similarly to why I think voter ID laws should be enacted. I don’t believe there’s an epidemic of non-citizen votes, but I do think allowing for the appearance thereof is itself a serious problem. People being concerned about election integrity is itself a valid and important reason to shore up the process, even if they can’t prove anything. I remember the first election I voted in was 2016, while I was in college; a couple of my friends were international students who asked about what it was like. They were somewhere between baffled and appalled when I explained the process and how little verification there was, even the one who was a very liberal girl was shocked. They couldn’t imagine that elections in the famous U.S. of A. were so ramshackle. It was an eye-opening experience.
Much the same applies to drop boxes and electronic voting. Even if they are largely secure in practice, the mere appearance of an opportunity for fraud is a pointless and stupid mistake.
Yes, but it is not a 1% chance. 1% chances are fine. By contrast, this is astronomical. Suppose that that in the bluest neighborhood on the planet, there is a chance of 99.9% that anyone will vote Democrat, far exceeding the margin of even one party states. Still, the odds of none of 13000 voting for the GOP would be merely 2 in a million. It is utterly implausible.
In this case though, I think that the better explanation is an utterly stupid way to update the votes (by bunches per candidate), not the most incompetent voting fraud in history.
It does sound like California went for "what is the stupidest way to hold an election?" and thus the kind of results here. If I go by what I'm reading online, they send out mail-in ballots automatically to everyone who's registered. But you can't check the voter rolls and get rid of any outdated information because that's MAGA Republican right-wing voter suppression. If you have a driver's licence, you get a ballot. And you can get a driver's licence even if you're an undocumented immigrant without a right to vote. So long as the ballot is returned within seven days after election day, it will be counted. Ballots are verified by signature so if there's a problem with the signature then they'll send you a form to fill out and return so the ballot can be counted. And what most boggles me, ballot harvesting. Well gosh, I sure can't immediately think of three ways off the top of my head this could be abused!
Some or all of the above may be mistaken or misinformed. But wow. Big rich technocratic blue blue blue governed state runs things in a manner that a parish raffle would blush to attempt, and this is the best anyone can do, don't complain or question you MAGA shill!
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Someone said that but provided no evidence. The problem with that claim wasn’t that one other candidate had voted to up. All other candidates excepting Pratt had their votes go up. So they release in batches for multiple candidates but not Pratt? That doesn’t pass the smell test.
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You’re overestimating the odds by a few orders of magnitude. Even in North Korea the ruling party only gets 99.93% of the vote — they “lose” 7/10,000. Cuba’s ruling party gets 80%. In Laos the ruling party gets 98%. In Vietnam they just got 99.96%.
If Democratic precincts are hitting one-party state margins, it’s at least a little plausible to wonder what else they might have in common?
Edit: to be clear I’m willing to accept the explanation that this is a reporting artifact, with the understanding that reporting votes this way is awfully convenient for masking fraud.
Such results only show the perfection of the psephological science in California that has brought elections to such a pitch of representative democracy, all results are validly valid and indicative that the greater population (save for a few diehard holdouts of regressive thought) are all perfectly informed, correct-thinking, on the right side of history, citizens! 😁
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The reporting artifact falls down when all the other candidates received votes (ie it wasn’t just one candidate).
If it is a voting artifact can anyone show where Pratt gets a dump of votes but no one else?
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No it’s not possible. Lizardman constant. The most favorable Dem districts tend to be 85-15% Dem. Not the 99-1 you’d need for this to make sense. By the way, some votes went to another Republican in the race. It was just zero to Pratt.
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