![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
On remedies for electoral fraud
So the Trump campaign has filed something like fifty lawsuits so far to change the outcome of the Presidential election, and almost all of them have been laughed out of court. (In one case a judge ordered that Republican party observers be allowed to stand six feet away from the counting, rather than twenty feet away. AFAIK, this is the biggest victory the Trump campaign has achieved in court since the election.)
As I understand it, most of the suits start with allegations that such-and-such security procedure, intended to ensure that only legitimate votes get counted, wasn't followed. That could be a legitimate complaint, although in some cases the allegations are hearsay, in some cases they're pure made-up fiction, and in some cases they're misunderstandings (yes, you saw people opening mail-in ballot envelopes and counting the ballots without checking the signatures, because the signatures had already been checked in a different room).
But let's suppose you actually found that an important security procedure, intended to ensure that only legitimate votes get counted, wasn't followed properly. What would that imply?
Well, it wouldn't imply that any illegitimate or fraudulent votes were actually counted. As far as we know, illegitimate and fraudulent votes are extremely rare in the U.S., on the order of one per million votes cast. So it's very unlikely to have happened by chance, but could happen if the people who opened the security hole were in cahoots with the people generating the illegitimate votes (bearing in mind that the more people know about a conspiracy, the greater the chance of somebody getting caught and/or spilling the beans). Anyway, you would need evidence not only that they could have slipped through, but that they did slip through. The Trump campaign's lawyers, when asked directly for such evidence, have repeatedly admitted they didn't have any.
But let's suppose you found solid evidence that a substantial number of illegitimate or fraudulent votes did slip through a security hole. What would that imply?
Well, it wouldn't imply that they were biased. The majority of illegitimate votes turn out to be honest mistakes, not intentional fraud. Since "honest mistakes" can happen to anyone of any political party, they're likely to be randomly distributed. For that matter, fraudulent intent also occurs in all political parties, so even intentional fraud could be randomly distributed. If there were a thousand illegitimate votes (which is way more than anybody has presented evidence for!), but 496 of them were for Anne and 504 were for Bob, it would only change the victory margin by 8 from what it "should" have been -- extremely unlikely to change the outcome.
But suppose you had solid evidence that a substantial number of illegitimate or fraudulent votes slipped through, and they were overwhelmingly for Anne -- far more than the vote margin in the general population. What would that imply?
The Trump campaign suggests, as a remedy, that when there's this much fraud, the only fair and unbiased solution is to invalidate the whole election. After all, a North Carolina judge did that with one Congressional seat in 2018 after discovering that the Republican candidate's campaign had counterfeited or tampered with hundreds of ballots. But none of these lawsuits seeks to invalidate the whole Presidential election, only particular counties or particular states, all of which (not surprisingly) are the ones Trump lost according to the official figures. Specifically, these cases are being brought in (a) states the President lost narrowly, and (b) counties the President lost by a wide margin.
Invalidating part of an election, after seeing the results, is anything but "fair and unbiased": it's selectively disenfranchising the voters who didn't vote the way you want them to. Suppose we estimate there were 1,000 more fraudulent votes (again, way more than anybody has presented evidence for) for Anne than for Bob in a particular county where Anne apparently won by 10,000 votes. Counting the fraudulent votes gives Anne 1,000 more votes (relative to Bob) than she "should" have, which is wrong. But invalidating that county's ballots (most of which are legitimate) gives Anne 9,000 fewer votes (relative to Bob) than she "should" have, which is nine times wronger.
There's a reasonable argument that if Anne's campaign conducted intentional fraud, it shouldn't be rewarded for doing so by counting the thousand fraudulent votes. On the other hand, the tens of thousands of ordinary voters who legitimately voted for Anne shouldn't be punished by having their votes erased. (How would you feel if you stood in line to vote for a candidate you truly believed in, and then had your vote thrown out because some possibly-minor functionary on the local campaign staff broke a rule, while people in other parts of the state didn't have their votes thrown out?) And of course, if you find any individuals who committed election fraud, you can and should prosecute them, aside from the question of who won the election.
If judges are to apply a principle of "do the least harm possible", they should invalidate county results in which Anne's campaign got fewer legitimate votes than fraudulent votes, which implies that Anne's legitimate votes are well below half of the vote total, and Anne has very little legitimate support in that county.
But the Trump campaign isn't bringing lawsuits in counties where Biden has "very little legitimate support"; it's bringing lawsuits in exactly the counties where Biden is believed to have the most legitimate support, according to numerous polls and a long history of voting heavily Democratic. This demonstrates that the goal isn't to invalidate fraudulent ballots, but to invalidate as many as possible legitimate ballots in Democratic-leaning areas.
As I understand it, most of the suits start with allegations that such-and-such security procedure, intended to ensure that only legitimate votes get counted, wasn't followed. That could be a legitimate complaint, although in some cases the allegations are hearsay, in some cases they're pure made-up fiction, and in some cases they're misunderstandings (yes, you saw people opening mail-in ballot envelopes and counting the ballots without checking the signatures, because the signatures had already been checked in a different room).
But let's suppose you actually found that an important security procedure, intended to ensure that only legitimate votes get counted, wasn't followed properly. What would that imply?
Well, it wouldn't imply that any illegitimate or fraudulent votes were actually counted. As far as we know, illegitimate and fraudulent votes are extremely rare in the U.S., on the order of one per million votes cast. So it's very unlikely to have happened by chance, but could happen if the people who opened the security hole were in cahoots with the people generating the illegitimate votes (bearing in mind that the more people know about a conspiracy, the greater the chance of somebody getting caught and/or spilling the beans). Anyway, you would need evidence not only that they could have slipped through, but that they did slip through. The Trump campaign's lawyers, when asked directly for such evidence, have repeatedly admitted they didn't have any.
But let's suppose you found solid evidence that a substantial number of illegitimate or fraudulent votes did slip through a security hole. What would that imply?
Well, it wouldn't imply that they were biased. The majority of illegitimate votes turn out to be honest mistakes, not intentional fraud. Since "honest mistakes" can happen to anyone of any political party, they're likely to be randomly distributed. For that matter, fraudulent intent also occurs in all political parties, so even intentional fraud could be randomly distributed. If there were a thousand illegitimate votes (which is way more than anybody has presented evidence for!), but 496 of them were for Anne and 504 were for Bob, it would only change the victory margin by 8 from what it "should" have been -- extremely unlikely to change the outcome.
But suppose you had solid evidence that a substantial number of illegitimate or fraudulent votes slipped through, and they were overwhelmingly for Anne -- far more than the vote margin in the general population. What would that imply?
The Trump campaign suggests, as a remedy, that when there's this much fraud, the only fair and unbiased solution is to invalidate the whole election. After all, a North Carolina judge did that with one Congressional seat in 2018 after discovering that the Republican candidate's campaign had counterfeited or tampered with hundreds of ballots. But none of these lawsuits seeks to invalidate the whole Presidential election, only particular counties or particular states, all of which (not surprisingly) are the ones Trump lost according to the official figures. Specifically, these cases are being brought in (a) states the President lost narrowly, and (b) counties the President lost by a wide margin.
Invalidating part of an election, after seeing the results, is anything but "fair and unbiased": it's selectively disenfranchising the voters who didn't vote the way you want them to. Suppose we estimate there were 1,000 more fraudulent votes (again, way more than anybody has presented evidence for) for Anne than for Bob in a particular county where Anne apparently won by 10,000 votes. Counting the fraudulent votes gives Anne 1,000 more votes (relative to Bob) than she "should" have, which is wrong. But invalidating that county's ballots (most of which are legitimate) gives Anne 9,000 fewer votes (relative to Bob) than she "should" have, which is nine times wronger.
There's a reasonable argument that if Anne's campaign conducted intentional fraud, it shouldn't be rewarded for doing so by counting the thousand fraudulent votes. On the other hand, the tens of thousands of ordinary voters who legitimately voted for Anne shouldn't be punished by having their votes erased. (How would you feel if you stood in line to vote for a candidate you truly believed in, and then had your vote thrown out because some possibly-minor functionary on the local campaign staff broke a rule, while people in other parts of the state didn't have their votes thrown out?) And of course, if you find any individuals who committed election fraud, you can and should prosecute them, aside from the question of who won the election.
If judges are to apply a principle of "do the least harm possible", they should invalidate county results in which Anne's campaign got fewer legitimate votes than fraudulent votes, which implies that Anne's legitimate votes are well below half of the vote total, and Anne has very little legitimate support in that county.
But the Trump campaign isn't bringing lawsuits in counties where Biden has "very little legitimate support"; it's bringing lawsuits in exactly the counties where Biden is believed to have the most legitimate support, according to numerous polls and a long history of voting heavily Democratic. This demonstrates that the goal isn't to invalidate fraudulent ballots, but to invalidate as many as possible legitimate ballots in Democratic-leaning areas.