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Given the significant interest around the 2020 stolen election claims (definitely my favorite hobby horse topic), and the serious accusations that I have been weakmanning the overall category of election fraud claims, I would like to extend an open invitation to anyone interested in exposing the errors of my ways to a real-time discussion for a Bailey episode.
Here are the conditions I would suggest:
Are any of the above unreasonable or unfair? Do you have any suggested additions/changes?
I've been trying to set a conversation like this for years but haven't found any takers. @Dean, @jfk, @motteposting are the ones I know are sufficiently motivated and informed about the topic, and whom I'd most look forward to dissecting this topic with. Feel free to nominate anyone else you think would be good.
The best evidence that we have election fraud is that no one is using any of the many tools developed to detect and prevent financial fraud. We don't white hat test fraud prevention like we do in auditing, we don't audit votes verifying that people who are reported as voting filled out their ballots in compliance with the law. We don't do any of that, even though these tools widely known and used.
The prior should be that significant fraud exists until proven otherwise, by showing that the system catches frequent, thorough tests.
Assuming arguendo that voting fraud is possible because there aren't enough safeguards, I don't see how that gets us to 1) fraud did not cancel itself out and instead favored a particular candidate then to 2) the one-sided fraud was significant enough to affect results 3) the fraud remained undetected despite significant efforts to uncover it.
If someone just wants to argue that fraud is possible, I'll take whatever I can get, but I'm looking for the strongest possible claims.
I’m not knowledgeable enough about potential electoral fraud to get into much of a debate, but it does seem to me that any fraud should tend to favor Democrats over Republicans simply because it’s easier for Democrats to cheat.
As @SwordOfOccam pointed out, “the best check on election fraud at any scale is that people of various ideologies and parties make up the officials and volunteers in any given area, and all it takes is one witness to expose something.” The trouble is, that’s just not the case in all urban districts. In 2012, for example, 59 voting precincts in Philadelphia alone voted 100% for Obama. The linked article notes that precincts in Chicago and Atlanta did the same in 2008. It would be much easier to run up the tally in those areas, either via fraudulent votes or fraudulent tallies, than it would be in even the reddist of Republican precincts, since Republicans don’t cluster up in the same way that urban Democrats do, and there are always at least a few Democrats in the strongest Republican strongholds.
I'd definitely be suspicious of 100% vote for anybody, because people mess up ballot papers, make mistakes, and surely there was at least one voter for the other guy. Maybe they mean "after all the spoiled and invalid votes were discarded, out of the remaining valid votes there were 100% for X", but even then it seems extraordinary.
Consider then that the fact those stats came from older elections, not 2020, and that 2020 had higher rates of black votes for Trump would indicate a decreased chance of skullduggery.
If you read the article, the fact that those precincts have almost no registered Republicans and no white people goes a long way towards explaining the 100% votes for the black candidate.
Frankly, if one was manufacturing an election outcome, one would hopefully not be stupid enough to just put 100% of the votes for the one guy. One would also have to watch that they don’t overshoot the number of registered voters or anything else too blatant.
If it were that obvious there’s no way for it to remain undetected. Any meaningful fraud has to be big enough to swing things and subtle enough to avoid detection. That’s a tall order as plots go.
Back in 2012, I don't think they cared about being subtle. Remember all the "demographics are destiny" triumphalism? So a Show Vote of 100% Havel's Greengrocer is not implausible. I don't think that the result necessarily indicates fraud, but it's a bit too good for an ordinary election, especially for 2012. 2008, yes I could imagine a lot of never-voted-before black voters showing up for First Black President, but 2012 was for the second term when some of the shine had worn off.
On the other hand, maybe it was just business as usual for certain districts: you pay us the walking around money, we get the vote out (no questions asked).
Wonder why they gave it up in 2016.
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