[The Final Dakar]

On my phone, but... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.efddcc729822

[subego]

There was one part of the article which made me go "huh?"

All of this, of course, has real political consequences. Because minority voters tend to be Democrats, strict voter ID laws tilt the primary electorate dramatically.

All else equal, when strict ID laws are instituted, the turnout gap between Republicans and Democrats in primary contests more than doubles from 4.3 points to 9.8 points. Likewise, the turnout gap between conservative and liberal voters more than doubles from 7.7 to 20.4 points.

Okay... when it comes to "real political consequences", about the most inconsequential thing I can think of is a primary gap. The party primaries are held independent of each other. The gap is utterly irrelevant to the outcome.

[The Final Dakar]

Open primaries, son

[subego]

So, if I'm understanding right, the gap implies there are more spoiler votes?

[The Final Dakar]

Mid-decade gerrymandering, anyone?
House GOP tweaks district maps as Democrats cry foul

[The Final Dakar]

Federal court finds Texas gerrymandered maps on racial lines - POLITICO

[OAW]

Imagine that.

The former chairman of Colorado's Republican Party was charged with forgery and voter fraud for allegedly forging his wife's mail-in ballot for the 2016 election, a local Fox News affiliate reported late Tuesday.

Steven Curtis, who was the chairman of the state party from 1997 to 1999, was charged on Feb. 1 with one count of forgery of a public record, a fifth-degree felony, and an elections mail-in ballot offense, which is a misdemeanor. Curtis is accused of filling out his wife's ballot and forging her signature.

Curtis has remained active in Colorado politics and oversaw the Denver Tea Party Patriots advisory board in 2011. He is also a local AM radio talk show host.

Last fall, ahead of the 2016 election, Curtis had knocked Democrats as the party associated with voter fraud.

“It seems to me,” Curtis said in a 42-minute segment of his KLZ 560 show, “that virtually every case of voter fraud I can remember in my lifetime was committed by Democrats.”

Ex-Colorado GOP head charged with voter fraud | TheHill

OAW

[The Final Dakar]

Arkansas Replaces Voter ID Law Struck Down By State Supreme Court With Basically The Same Thing | The Huffington Post

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) signed a bill Friday requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls ― even though the state Supreme Court struck down a nearly identical measure just three years ago.

A similar requirement was enacted just four years ago, but the state Supreme Court struck it down in 2014. The court found that the voting requirements of the law went beyond what was required by the constitution, which only says that a voter must be at least 18 years old, a resident of Arkansas and lawfully registered.

Talk about being determined. Still, there's some maneuvering going on...

Four of the seven judges who struck down the initial voter ID law no longer remain on the court. The three remaining wrote a concurring opinion, arguing that the law was invalid because it did not get the necessary two-thirds majority necessary in the legislature to change the voting requirements in the state constitution. This time around, the bill got the support of both houses, passing 74-21 in the Arkansas House and 25-8 in the Senate.

Perhaps anticipating a legal challenge to the new law, Arkansas lawmakers passed a separate measure to put a constitutional amendment requiring photo ID on the state ballot in 2018.

I'm sure they have plenty of voter impersonation fraud cases that happened in the interim to justify this obsession.

[The Final Dakar]

Should this count as voter suppression? Montana Republicans Spending Taxpayer Money To Avoid A Defeat | The Huffington Post

State lawmakers concluded that the special election would cost an unbudgeted $750,000, so they set about figuring a way to do it more cheaply.

A Republican lawmaker proposed a one-time mail ballot system. At the time, nobody in their right mind thought the election would be seriously contested ― Democrats haven’t won a House seat in Montana since 1994, after all ― and the state Senate approved the cost-saving measure.

But then something strange happened: The election got real. And Republicans who often boast of fiscal conservatism had a change of heart.

The GOP-controlled state House effectively killed the mail-in ballot bill on March 31, after the state GOP chair, state Rep. Jeff Essmann, wrote a letter to party members warning that a mail system would favor Democrats and hurt the GOP’s chances of holding onto the seat.

[The Final Dakar]

Texas voter ID law designed to discriminate, judge rules - CNNPolitics.com

[The Final Dakar]

GOP lawmaker on Ossoff: ‘These lines were not drawn’ to elect Democrat | Political Insider blog

“I’ll be very blunt: These lines were not drawn to get Hank Johnson’s protégé to be my representative. And you didn’t hear that,” said Millar. “They were not drawn for that purpose, OK? They were not drawn for that purpose.”

[The Final Dakar]

MT House speaker kills mail-ballot bill with parliamentary power - KXLH.com | Helena, Montana

Republican House Speaker Austin Knudsen is using his parliamentary power to kill a measure allowing counties to hold an all-mail ballot in Montana’s May 25 special congressional election.

Knudsen has refused to schedule a floor vote on House Bill 83, which Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock sent back to the House on April 7, with amendments giving counties the option to conduct an all-mail ballot.

Not transparent at all.

[The Final Dakar]

Now we know how bad voter fraud is in North Carolina | Charlotte Observer

On Friday, the State Board of Elections released the results of an extensive, objective audit of the 2016 election. It found that 4,769,640 votes were cast in November and that one (1) would probably have been avoided with a voter ID law. One out of nearly 4.8 million.

The Board’s investigation is helpful toward that end. It found 508 ineligible votes cast. About 87 percent of those (441) were felons who voted. State law prohibits felons from voting until their sentence is fully served, including probation and parole. It is believed that many of the felons who voted did not realize they could not vote while on probation.

The probe found 41 non-citizens, from 28 countries, voted. All were here legally, but were not eligible to vote. The audit also found 24 cases of double-voting and two cases of voter impersonation (one by mail and one in person).

[The Final Dakar]

Judge reopens Georgia voter registration ahead of runoff | TheHill

[The Final Dakar]

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireS...d-law-47416385

It's dead Jim.

[The Final Dakar]

SCOTUS strikes down some racially gerrymandered districts in NC

[BadKosh]

While in Virginia, DEMOCRAT Gov. terrible McAwful does nothing.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...oted-illegally

[subego]

Let's fix this problem by requiring IDs to vote!

That's some ****ing brilliance on display.

[BadKosh]

Another source

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...-in-elections/

“At the instruction of Governor McAuliffe’s political appointees, local election officials spent countless resources to prevent this information from spilling into the open,” Mr. Adams said in a statement releasing the report. “From NoVa to Norfolk and all urban and rural points in between, alien voters are casting ballots with practically no legal consequences in response.”

[subego]

"Another" implies it isn't quoting the same same study as the first.

[BadKosh]

Another source for the information/reporting, not a different STUDY.

[The Final Dakar]

Originally Posted by subego 

Let's fix this problem by requiring IDs to vote!

That's some ****ing brilliance on display.

This thread, distilled

[subego]

Originally Posted by BadKosh 

Another source for the information/reporting, not a different STUDY.

The study is the primary source for both articles.

[The Final Dakar]

http://www.politico.com/magazine/sto...ecution-215164

Two years later, Kobach has produced exactly nine convictions. Most of them were not illegal immigrants but rather older registered Republicans.

In August of 2012, Wilson, a 66-year-old entrepreneur, went to vote in Goodland, Kansas, a small town near the Colorado border. When Wilson was asked where he lived, he said he owned homes in both Kansas and Colorado. When he was asked where he voted, he answered that he voted in local elections in both states. An election official told him to fill out a provisional ballot, so he did. When he went to the clerk’s office to update his address and vote in 2014, he again filled out a provisional ballot at the direction of the clerk.

“I’d vote for president in one state, and local issues in both places,” he told POLITICO Magazine. He said he’d been doing this ever since his property tax bill on a hotel he owned in Goodland had doubled in one year in 2004.

Because they were provisional ballots, they were never actually counted. But that didn’t matter to Kobach who in 2015, after a local prosecutor’s decision not to open a case, charged Wilson with three felonies and seven misdemeanors. Kobach alleged that Wilson had voted unlawfully going back to 2010 and that he had committed perjury by signing Kansas’s voting registration form, which stipulates citizens verify they will vote only once.

“One outcome of this commission is that we could be talking a lot more about Crosscheck,” said Mark Johnson, who teaches election law at the University of Kansas law school and defended a man prosecuted by Kobach for voter fraud. “Since there are a significant number of false matches with Crosscheck, you’re inevitably going to lose people off the voter roles who should be allowed to vote.”

The larger problem, Johnson explained, that Kobach’s critics run into in the debate around Crosscheck and other voting rights issues, is that they can’t defend the absolute accuracy of elections. When Kobach says one improper vote tarnishes an entire election, Johnson can’t argue that all votes are cast legally—just that the vast majority are.

I mean, if you're looking for purity of vote, then you're elevating the outcome over the method.

[Cap'n Tightpants]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...-than-estimat/

This could be Yuge:

Study supports Trump: 5.7 million noncitizens may have cast illegal votes

A research group in New Jersey has taken a fresh look at post-election polling data and concluded that the number of noncitizens voting illegally in U.S. elections is likely far greater than previous estimates. As many as 5.7 million noncitizens may have voted in the 2008 election, which put Barack Obama in the White House.

The research organization Just Facts, a widely cited, independent think tank led by self-described conservatives and libertarians, revealed its number-crunching in a report on national immigration.

Just Facts President James D. Agresti and his team looked at data from an extensive Harvard/YouGov study that every two years questions a sample size of tens of thousands of voters. Some acknowledge they are noncitizens and are thus ineligible to vote.

Just Facts’ conclusions confront both sides in the illegal voting debate: those who say it happens a lot and those who say the problem nonexistent.

In one camp, there are groundbreaking studies by professors at Old Dominion University in Virginia who attempted to compile scientifically derived illegal voting numbers using the Harvard data, called the Cooperative Congressional Election Study.

On the other side are the professors who conducted the study and contended that “zero” noncitizens of about 18 million adults in the U.S. voted. The liberal mainstream media adopted this position and proclaimed the Old Dominion work was “debunked.”

The ODU professors, who stand by their work in the face of attacks from the left, concluded that in 2008 as few as 38,000 and as many as 2.8 million noncitizens voted.

Mr. Agresti’s analysis of the same polling data settled on much higher numbers. He estimated that as many as 7.9 million noncitizens were illegally registered that year and 594,000 to 5.7 million voted.

These numbers are more in line with the unverified estimates given by President Trump, who said the number of ballots cast by noncitizens was the reason he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.

[Paco500]

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...-than-estimat/

This could be Yuge:

Let's consider the sources.
Washington Times - Blatantly Conservative Paper.

Just Facts - Absurdly partisan group pretending to be objective. What makes me say this? Check this link.
http://www.justfactsdaily.com
Almost* every article on this page is aggressively partisan. (*I only spotted one or two that were not lock step with Republican talking points)

This is in no way unbiased or credible reporting.

[Cap'n Tightpants]

Yeah, I expect that some will just bash the source and move on, but I'm waiting to see if there are any actual counters to their information.

[Paco500]

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants 

Yeah, I expect that some will just bash the source and move on, but I'm waiting to see if there are any actual counters to their information.

Ok, let's start with a critique of the Washington Times article.

Originally Posted by Washington Times

Just Facts President James D. Agresti and his team looked at data from an extensive Harvard/YouGov study that every two years questions a sample size of tens of thousands of voters. Some acknowledge they are noncitizens and are thus ineligible to vote.

This is misleading at best. First off, the original study data was based on an online survey and was completely self-selective. We know how accurate these are. Additionally, the self-selecting survey had 32,000 respondents. Technically 'tens of thousands,' but when the actual facts are readily available, the only reason to use this phraseology is to big up the numbers. Of those 32.000, only 339 checked the box that said they were non-citizens, and of those 339, only 38 checked the box saying they voted. This is hardly a sufficient sample size from which to drawn meaningful conclusions.

In fact, the lead author of the study on which Just Facts bases their research has stated unequivocally that it has been misinterpreted and misused by Trump and his apologists.

The new data points Just Facts has added to the original bogus claims to come up with the number of up to 5.7 million are completely speculative and unscientific.

Originally Posted by Just Facts

• Trump campaigned on a promise to crack down on illegal immigration, and this may have driven non-citizens to vote against him.

• the number of adult non-citizens in the U.S. recorded by the Census Bureau has risen from 19.4 million in 2008 to 21.0 million in 2016.

• shortly before the election, Obama publicly stated that election records are not cross-checked against immigration databases and “there is not a situation where the voting rolls somehow are transferred over and people start investigating, et cetera.” This let non-citizens know that they stand little chance of being caught if they vote.

All this 'Yuge' bombshell is a politically motivated rehash of a misinterpreted study with added bullshit.

[subego]

The WT article cites the professors who did the Old Dominion study as the professors taking issue with the Old Dominion study.

Wat

[Paco500]

Originally Posted by subego 

The WT article cites the professors who did the Old Dominion study as the professors taking issue with the Old Dominion study.

Wat

The authors of the study defend the study for what is was. What they take issue with and have denounced was the completely flawed interpretation of the study and it's use as a defence of Trump's claim that 'millions' of non-citizens voted.

[Cap'n Tightpants]

The data is being interpreted 2 different ways, but either way, illegal immigrants were voting. To say it was the fewest possible (38k) is stupid, but so is saying it was the most (5.7M), leaving us somewhere in the middle. Figuring on an average, that's still millions of illegal votes, way more than enough to skew an election.

[Paco500]

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants 

The data is being interpreted 2 different ways, but either way, illegal immigrants were voting. To say it was the fewest possible (38k) is stupid, but so is saying it was the most (5.7M), leaving us somewhere in the middle. Figuring on an average, that's still millions of illegal votes, way more than enough to skew an election.

That's the way you choose to interpret the data, not the the way the authors of the study choose to interpret the data.

Originally Posted by Author of Study Jesse Richman

“Trump and others have been misreading our research and exaggerating our results to make claims we don’t think our research supports,” Richman says. “I’m not sure why they continue to do it, but there’s not much I can do about that aside from set the record straight.”

and

Originally Posted by Author of Study Jesse Richman

“I can’t quite account for the math being so badly wrong in their analyses,” he says of the Trump administration’s interpretation of his report.

But I'm sure you know better.

[Cap'n Tightpants]

???

Even if you only use their interpretation, it's between 38K and 2.8M, and the avg is still millions of people (>1.4M), which could still very easily skew a US election. But I'm sure you'll find a way to whine about that too. Right?

[Paco500]

I'm going to add to this. Of course some people who shouldn't have voted did. It is also probable that those that did vote illegally voted democrat. There were also definitely some people who were wrongly prevented from legally voting. It's also probable that they would have voted democrat.

Maybe they balance out. Maybe they don't. But there is no compelling evidence that voter fraud had any impact on national elections. There is only misinterpreted data and speculation.

[Paco500]

Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants 

???

Even if you only use their interpretation, it's between 38K and 2.8M, and the avg is still millions of people (>1.4M), which could still very easily skew a US election. But I'm sure you'll find a way to whine about that too. Right?

No, you are using the funny math 'Just Facts' and Trump apologists use.

Per the study:

Here’s what the math should look like (that is, if Richman’s initial study was accurate—which many researchers doubt). If 6.4 percent of the estimated 20.3 million noncitizens in the US voted, and if just 81.8 percent of them voted for Clinton (the percentage who voted for Obama in his 2008 study), that’s an added margin of a little more than 835,000 votes. In other words: Even with all of those supposedly fraudulent ballots, Clinton still would have won the popular vote by more than 2 million votes.

And remember, all of this is based on a self-selecting, non-scientific, internet poll.

[Cap'n Tightpants]

Originally Posted by Paco500 

No, you are using the funny math 'Just Facts' and Trump apologists use.

"OMG! You sound like a Trumper!" I don't care what you think, and that's not a rebuttal. Taking an avg of the original study's own high and low is hardly "funny math", you simply fear the possibility that there are millions of illegals voting, namely because ~90% are going to vote for the party who wants to allow them to stay in the USA... no doubt, in part, so those illegals can continue voting.

And remember, all of this is based on a self-selecting, non-scientific, internet poll.

If you threw out internet polls, there wouldn't be a single modern study that isn't affected, because they all, at least in part, rely on internet polls now. What's truly comical is how the Left loved the poll when it backed their agenda, and now they harp about it being unscientific. Hell, even the original researchers are throwing their own work under the bus, now that their numbers could turn against them.

I can't wait until next time someone on the Left around here brings up poll numbers, because invariably there will be at least some element of said poll that relies on internet feedback. It'll be a hoot.

[Paco500]

Who knows, maybe you, the Washington Times, Just Facts, and Trump have all stumbled on something the author of the study, Paul Ryan, Rand Paul, Mitch McConnell, John McCain, and pretty much everyone else who has looked at this EXACT EVIDENCE has missed.

But I really doubt it.

Again, there is no new story here- it's the same old study with a bit of new bullshit added to it.

As for the internet study (not poll) bit, it's not that the research was done using the web that is at issue, it's that the study was self-selecting. This is an important distinction that you are either consciously ignoring or don't understand. Either way, it matters.

[Cap'n Tightpants]

Oh, I understand it, but it still isn't going to change potentially millions of illegal votes into "almost nothing". You know that, I know that, so stop pretending. The rest can be chalked up to the men in question not believing that it would be enough to change the election of 2017, particularly in key swing states, which is what they were talking about in the first place.

Why would they question the results? Given that could call into question the outcome? They still support new voter ID laws to cut down on illegal immigrants voting in the future, though, don't they? Don't act like they're going from being totally rational one moment to irrational the next, on the same issue.

[BadKosh]

The polls had Hillary ahead and she lost. so much for accurate polls. Same in GA. this week.

[subego]

Since Illinois did the dance with the Voter Fraud Panel, I got to take a peek at our election code.

Apparently, the only people who can access the State database are state/local political parties, and government agencies.

To skirt around (Bush era) requirements government agencies do privacy impact studies if they want to sling that kind of data, the DoJ has explicitly argued the Panel is not a government agency.

Whoops! No soup for you.

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by BadKosh 

The polls had Hillary ahead and she lost. so much for accurate polls.

I maintain its because Republican voters were ashamed of who they voted for and lied about it.

[Cap'n Tightpants]

Nope. Polls had a Dem +6 - +8 correction built into them ("wow factor"), the same as they did for Obama in both of his wins. The problem was, Clinton wasn't liked nearly as much as Obama. She couldn't fill a movie theater with her supporters, while Trump was filling 80k seat stadiums. Despite his stupidity, he created buzz and excitement, while comparatively she was exciting as a visit from grandma.

[P]

It wasn't so much the polls as who was reading them. The last two weeks this was a very uncertain election, but some of the pundits didn't want to consider the possibility of a Trump win. The polls missed by a bit - mostly because they overestimated black turnout - but it wasn't huge, and the only complete failure was WI. Recall that all the close states went to Trump (except CO, if you consider that close) and two or even one (if it was FL) the other way would have changed the outcome.

Knowing what we know now, Dems should have focused on turnout in inner cities in PA and MI, maybe given up on NC and put that money into FL, and not consider WI quite so safe as they did. I think that a "Biden-like" VP would have helped in the Midwest, while Kane only really delivered his home state. In general they pursued a strategy of putting a lot of states close instead of picking one path and making it solid.

Also note that Hillary outperformed her polls in some areas, notably CA, but that it didn't change the outcome in the EC.

[Cap'n Tightpants]

Originally Posted by P 

Also note that Hillary outperformed her polls in some areas, notably CA, but that it didn't change the outcome in the EC.

With, by far, the highest amount of illegal immigrant voting.

[subego]

Illegal immigrants who vote also presumably participate in polls.

[Chongo]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

I maintain its because Republican voters were ashamed of who they voted for and lied about it.

AKA the Bradley Effect.

[Chongo]

Here in AZ, Apache county has more registered voter than there are residents >18

[Cap'n Tightpants]

Originally Posted by subego 

Illegal immigrants who vote also presumably participate in polls.

I wouldn't. Those pollsters ask a lot of questions (specifically to flesh-out the voting demographics), much more than the election officials themselves, and most illegals prefer to fly under the radar, for obvious reasons. Phone polls don't work well with them either, they change phone numbers much more frequently than anyone else, since they migrate around the country for agricultural and other seasonal work.

[andi*pandi]

who does answer polls? old people who are just happy to hear someone on the phone.

[subego]

I answered one recently about the mayoral race. It was kinda dumb.

What attracted me was being able to register my displeasure with Rahm.