Allegations of Fraud in 2020 US Election

[pgwenthold]

It's just inconceivable that Biden would edge a victory in states that have a history of voting Democratic when Trump trailed by so much for so long in all of the opinion polls.

I know this is Cain, but, that is funny, because it's exactly the point.

 

[No Other]

Maybe, maybe not. Physicians use xrays to find fractures. Can you identify election fraud with Benford's law? Sounds like people are just talking nonsense to me at this point.

The x-ray is only a medium; the x-ray needs to be interpreted... just like anything that utilizes Benford's Law.

 

[wareyin]

One of our resident conspiracy theorists hilariously thought it would be a good idea to mention “evidence” gathered by Project Veritas.

Well, this is how that’s going.

On a reload: "Project Veritas is offering a $25K reward for tips related to election fraud...which strikes me as something you do if you don't already have a ton of evidence of voter on hand."

What are the odds that that $25k gets paid out of the Trump campaign fund?

 

[Meadmaker]

Two answers here:
1. A "conspiracy theory" that only a handful of insignificant loons believe may not be worth investigate, where an identically false idea believed by half the country might be worth investigating.

2. As I keep saying, I believe a similar situation applied in 1960. Nixon had to conduct his own investigation first before an official one was begun, unfortunately for him he ran out of time and it had to be handed over to the new administration to complete and disappeared into the weeds. The "irregularity" there was of the sort of scale Trump would need to find here. An investigation was allowed in 1960 on less evidence than we have now, I don't see why it shouldn't be allowed today.

For me, I don't object to an investigation.

I do object to the behavior of the White House, and especially it's primary occupant, in this. Suppose he were to come out and say, directly or through a spokesman, "We believe that there are some serious irregularities in the voting process that could affect the outcome of the election. We believe these should be investigated in accordance with our laws, and we ask your patience as we await the outcome of the investigation. As many state elections have noted in recent days, it is more important to have an accurate result than a quick one.". If he did that, I'm sure lots of people would scream, holler, and whine about it, but, personally, I would shrug and say that's fine.

Instead, what we have is a moron raging into his cell phone saying, "I WON".

It's embarrassing, but more than that, it's dangerous. He is telling millions of Americans, "Your election system can't be trusted." The dangerous part is that a lot of people are believing him.

Meanwhile, though, we have some specific allegations to investigate, but the ones that we've actually heard about are a big plate full of nothing. Somebody heard that somebody did something somewhere. The allegations we've heard so far are either easily debunked or of very little consequence, or both.

 

[No Other]

Your medical expertise is impressive, on a par with our current president. The vast majority of fractures are diagnosed by x-rays alone.

Your swarmy and stupid remark is noted. X-rays do not diagnose a fracture, a Technician, or some other Professional interprets the x-ray.

Even fractures not definitively identified by x-ray (e.g., nondisplaced fractures) are often simply treated presumptively with splints/casts and rechecked on x-ray later.

Rechecked by a Professional... the x-ray does not check itself.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Democrats should start investigations of all House and Senate seats races they lost within a margin of, say, 5 points.

 

[No Other]

This is not just wrong, but trivially wrong. Benford's Law for the first digit breaks down completely as soon as the span of results falls below one order of magnitude; it cannot possibly succeed because not all leading digits are even present in the sample. It's well established that its applicability increases with the number of orders of magnitude spanned, so at the point of just one order of magnitude its applicability has decreased to the point where it's right on the verge of breaking down completely.

Benford's Law for the second digit is perhaps more credible. I'd note that the analysis originally presented as evidence for vote-rigging has only one instance of Benford's Law for the second digit, in which it presents one set of Biden data on an expanded Y-axis and one of Trump data on a compressed Y-axis to give the false impression of an obvious difference between them, and when the data is plotted on consistent Y-axes the Biden data shows only a very slightly greater variance than the Trump data. We can assume from the entire slant of the piece that the data has been chosen to show the most damning possible result in each case.

So we have one cherry-picked instance of a deviation from Benford's Law in the first digit in Biden data, compared with instances of Trump data that shows a different deviation from Benford's Law; and we have one cherry-picked instance of a very minor and unexceptional deviation from Benford's Law in the second digit in Biden data, which is dishonestly presented to give the appearance that it's much more severe than it actually is.

Overall, against a burden of proof required to cast doubt on the basic honesty of the electoral system, one minor statistical anomaly and one piece of blatantly dishonest spin is pretty pathetic.



Your fallacy is: Reversed burden of proof. Explain how this tool is appropriate for election results, given that there is, taking the best possible interpretation for your claim, clearly no consensus among experts that this is the case.

Dave

You have no idea what you are talking about. You lifted an incorrect descriptive phrase regarding Benford's Law and passed yourself off as an Expert. Now you write a lengthy paragraph as if you posses inherent mathematical skills.

You are a fake.

 

[Meadmaker]

Factcheck.org has a page dealing with various viral videos alleging voter fraud:

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/11/viral-voting-misinformation/

As one might expect, the videos are manipulated, taken out of context, or demonstrated to be misleading in a number of ways.


I've been looking for the story behind ST's "backdating ballots" claim, but haven't found anything. It doesn't match any of the factcheck examples that I noticed.

 

[shuttlt]

I do object to the behavior of the White House, and especially it's primary occupant, in this. Suppose he were to come out and say, directly or through a spokesman, "We believe that there are some serious irregularities in the voting process that could affect the outcome of the election. We believe these should be investigated in accordance with our laws, and we ask your patience as we await the outcome of the investigation. As many state elections have noted in recent days, it is more important to have an accurate result than a quick one.". If he did that, I'm sure lots of people would scream, holler, and whine about it, but, personally, I would shrug and say that's fine.

If Trumps manner isn't factored in at this point, it never will be.

Instead, what we have is a moron raging into his cell phone saying, "I WON".

It's embarrassing, but more than that, it's dangerous. He is telling millions of Americans, "Your election system can't be trusted." The dangerous part is that a lot of people are believing him.

I'm not sure it is greatly worse than telling millions of Americans that the president is a white supremacist working for the Russians and people who vote for him a racists. Whether these things are done eloquently or with an air of seriousness and gravitas makes no difference to me.

Meanwhile, though, we have some specific allegations to investigate, but the ones that we've actually heard about are a big plate full of nothing. Somebody heard that somebody did something somewhere. The allegations we've heard so far are either easily debunked or of very little consequence, or both.

These things have yet to be investigated. We have to wait and see.

 

[quadraginta]

That's a classic conspiracy theorist wedge argument. If there's an investigation that finds no significant wrongdoing, that also will be seen as a cover up.

Dave

By some people, sure but that isn't any reason to help them by implementing a coverup of what might be nothing.

The same people. Which is the point.

Those same people would insist that not having an investigation when no investigation was warranted is a "cover up".

Big deal. There is nothing that they wouldn't consider a cover up.

All they are interested in is fomenting FUD. They have no desire for facts or the establishment of verified outcomes. That isn't their goal.

They get what they want either way.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

In any sufficiently large system, there will be errors.

I have no doubt that after all this squawking coming from the Trump team, they will eventually find some example of legitimate improper or even fraudulent votes. Some example where a poll worker gave improper instructions or didn't follow proper protocol,
mail in ballot without the proper format or signatures, some example of an ineligible voter casting a ballot, or even an example of a double vote or impersonation fraud.

It's important to remember that nobody credible says that voter fraud doesn't exist, it's just that voter fraud is insignificant. It simply does not occur at high enough rates to be meaningful. The Trump team may be able to find some poster boy example of an illegal vote, but there's nothing to suggest voter fraud changed the course of the election.

It's important to remember where the goal posts actually lie in this scenario. Trump lost in several swing states, often in margins of 10's or 100's of thousands. Even flipping one state, like GA, through legal maneuvering would not tip the election back his way. This isn't a Bush/Gore 2000 scenario where a single state with a tiny margin can decide the result. There is no nail biting as a single county deals with hanging chads. Biden's lead is substantial, there's no avenue for nibbling around the edges to make a victory. Huge chunks of Biden's votes have to be eliminated.

The Trump team will have to find hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots, in the right states, to squeeze out a win. This means finding massive, widespread flaws in our voting system that have previously gone undetected. Only a moron or a propagandist would honestly believe this is even remotely likely.

 

[shuttlt]

The same people. Which is the point.

Trump voters aren't a monolith.

Those same people would insist that not having an investigation when no investigation was warranted would consider that a "cover up".

Big deal. There is nothing that they wouldn't consider a cover up.

All they are interested in is fomenting FUD. They have no desire for facts or the establishment of verified outcomes. That isn't their goal.

They get what they want either way.

Well, perhaps some Trump voters may be persuaded. You can do no harm to people who aren't open to persuasion and you may persuade the people who are.

If you abandon trying to understand people who disagree with you and trying to persuade them, then there is nothing left but power and compulsion.

 

[Meadmaker]

Benford's Law for the second digit is perhaps more credible. I'd note that the analysis originally presented as evidence for vote-rigging has only one instance of Benford's Law for the second digit, in which it presents one set of Biden data on an expanded Y-axis and one of Trump data on a compressed Y-axis to give the false impression of an obvious difference between them, and when the data is plotted on consistent Y-axes the Biden data shows only a very slightly greater variance than the Trump data.

After doing all that work to figure out Benford's Law beyond the superficial understanding I had yesterday, I went back to the original links and paid closer attention and.....it's nonsense.

The graphs often don't actually show what they are claiming. There are graphs that show distributions that don't follow Benford's Law, captioned as showing that they do follow Benford's Law. The axis deformation is one of the ways they used to facilitate the flim-flam.

Around the web are all sorts of nonsense claims being printed, along the lines that "natural data" is expeted to follow Benford's Law. No, that's not true. There are a lot of exponentials in the world, and those follow Benford's Law. There are also lots of Gaussian and uniform processes. Those don't.

What we have is a bunch of people who heard there was this magic formula that could be used to detect fraud, and so they said the incantations and they are sure that the spirits are telling them there's fraud in the data, but it really is no more credible than that. It's psuedoscience. it looks like science, but it isn't.

I would be curious to go and look at the Iranian election data. I am strongly suspecting that it was not critically examined and it was very easy to go with headlines that said, "Math Wizards Prove that Iranian Elections Were Rigged!", because we were pretty sure that the Iranian elections were rigged anyway, or at least that's what we wanted to hear.

 

[quadraginta]

Democrats should start investigations of all House and Senate seats races they lost within a margin of, say, 5 points.

Seems reasonable.

They would only be following the lead that the Repugnicans have established.

Why would Democratic candidates in a Senate race have a smaller percentage of the vote than the Democrat who headed the ticket.

Seems pretty suspicious to me. Must be election fraud.

 

[shuttlt]

It's important to remember that nobody credible says that voter fraud doesn't exist, it's just that voter fraud is insignificant. It simply does not occur at high enough rates to be meaningful.

And yet a congressional election in North Carolina is being rerun because of fraud.

 

[Meadmaker]

I'm not sure it is greatly worse than telling millions of Americans that the president is a white supremacist working for the Russians and people who vote for him a racists. Whether these things are done eloquently or with an air of seriousness and gravitas makes no difference to me.

For what it's worth, I think there's some truth to that. It's a more complicated topic, but I think some of what has happened over the past four years has been damaging, and not all of the bad stuff came from Trump.

 

[shuttlt]

For what it's worth, I think there's some truth to that. It's a more complicated topic, but I think some of what has happened over the past four years has been damaging, and not all of the bad stuff came from Trump.

Thank you. Comments like that are how people are brought back together.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

And yet a congressional election in North Carolina is being rerun because of fraud.

Was rerun. The Republican election fraud scheme occurred in 2018.

Yes, an honest to god example of election fraud (not voter fraud) that left behind clear pieces of evidence and ended with criminal indictments for the fraudsters involved. A great example, thanks.

That election was originally tilted by a few hundred illegal votes, which left behind detectable evidence of a crime that was readily discovered by those overseeing the process.

Surely an election fraud scheme that resulted in 10's of thousands of illegal votes will make finding evidence of widespread, systematic illegal schemes easy.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Obviously, democratic circles talked about fraud 2004 and 2016. Some of the claims were similar.

The tone is different now.

Speculation: difference in tone comes from right wing background in apocalyptic evangelism.

 

[quadraginta]

<snip>

If you abandon trying to understand people who disagree with you and trying to persuade them,

Do you not recognise that some people are unwilling to be persuaded and even the simple act of trying to will only cause them to dig in deeper. That facts and evidence are useless and will only make them angry?

And that this is a common and widespread characteristic of the sort of people who continue to support Trump even after four years of blatant, incontrovertible proof that he is an unprincipled, narcissistic, pathological liar with absolutely no regard for laws or for the welfare of the country or anything else aside from adulation ... and his bank account.

then there is nothing left but power and compulsion.

Nonsense. They can simply be ignored until their intransigence becomes threatening.

Then you can let the law deal with them.