statistical analysis would most likely show tampering on any large scale >10% - even with voter apathy. i would also wonder how easy it would be to get rid of 100's or 1000's of paper ballots without anyone noticing a mail carrier 1)seperating ballots from the regular mail (LOTS of little old ladies peaking out their windows at ALL times of the day/night 2)a lack of ballots coming into the transfer station from a particular carriers route 3)a lack of ballots coming in from a particular route/area 4)do you shred and/or burn the ballots - if so you take a chance on someone seeing you during the process of transporting them to a discrete location and during the process in what is thought to be a discrete location but really is not 5)if you don't destroy the ballots but just dump them - how can you be sure no one finds them ever - because if they do you are certainly going to be a suspect. lots of stuff to think about which begs the question 'is this something that can be done on a small scale or would one need a large operation?' if the answer is a large operation then you have multiple people involved and we all know that loose lips sink ships. Crispin Cowan wrote: > T.Kenji Sugahara wrote: > >> There is an assumption that is being made here.... the assumption is >> that the mail carrier knows which choices are made on specific >> ballots. Otherwise, if the carrier misdirects mail from certain >> districts the mail carrier could be misdirecting ballots that could >> be in favor of the mail carrier's perspective. > > > The mail carrier attack depends on the mail carrier knowing the > demographic of the district they're working, which is often less > difficult than it might seem. For instance, a Democrat mail worker in > Prineville or Pendleton could safely dump 40% of the ballots they are > supposed to deliver, safe in the knowledge that most of them would > have been Republican votes. The converse is true for liberal > neighborhoods in Portland and Eugene. > >> If there is a larger disappearance from specific counties, then you >> could make the argument that there is a higher statistical likelihood >> that ballots favoring one party would more likely have disappeared. > > > But American voter turnout is so poor and so erratic that it would be > hard to detect the attack. The attacking mail carrier has to balance > how many ballots they lose against detection: lose 100% and it will be > noticed, lose 10% and they have no impact, lose 40% and it may well work. > >> However, to have that much of an impact, that sort of voter fraud >> would become apparent quite quickly (by comparing historical voting >> records). In addition, tampering with ballots themselves would be >> pretty apparent, and quite time consuming for the individual >> hypothetical partisan carriers. > > > You don't have to tamper with the ballots, just lose them on a > district-by-district basis for heavily biased districts. > > Toning it down a bit: IMHO, digital voting from the likes of Diebold > is a MUCH greater threat to the legitimacy of democracy in America > than vote-by-mail. Vote-by-mail is vulnerable to small-scale fraud > that has to be done on a distributed grass-roots level to be > effective. Digital voting can be completely and surrepticiously > corrupted by a voting machine vendor who favors one party. > > Crispin > >
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Sep 11 2003 - 16:56:23 PDT