"The district attorney's office says Montenegro submitted more than 8,000 fraudulent voter registration applications between July and October 2020."
It is unfortunate that the article doesn't detail how these two were caught. Personally, I don't know how to reconcile being told that voter fraud is exceedingly rare when I see articles like this where individuals and teams of people are caught falsifying information on this scale. What if these people only falsified 20 identities instead of 8000? Would they have been caught?
If the process for identifying fraud isn't particularly robust or thorough, how can you legitimately say fraud is extremely rare?
Many (or most) of the people who say there is absolutely no voter fraud actually tailor their words quite carefully; they usually say there's no evidence of "in-person impersonation fraud".
I personally have no idea how much fraud there is, or whether it matters. It seems like voting fraud would be very difficult to detect, as there is (by definition) no way to double-check.
I'm not sure what you mean, there are plenty of ways to double check. This article doesn't say how exactly these people were caught, but the emphasis on the "homeless" element would seem to indicate that the voter registration applications were checked against claimed residences and mismatches were found. You are required to give various types of information when you register to vote in California, including home address, citizenship status, etc. All of these can be checked against if needed.
But again, everything you've written can be checked, as it was in this case.
>It doesn’t need to be in millions. A few thousand can be enough, yet you can still say it’s a tiny problem
No, I say it's a problem that doesn't exist without evidence. Apparently there is massive, widespread fraud that is obviously everywhere yet even in the current environment where every vote is being contested and gone over with a fine-toothed comb those yelling "voter fraud" can't produce a shred of evidence of it happening. That is, evidence admissible in court, not chum to launch a frenzy on social media.
If people making these claims have evidence of fraud or a problem in voting, then bring it to court and let justice be done. Otherwise, this needs to stop. It's unbelievably harmful to democracy to baselessly undermine the legitimacy of elections.
The 'mastermind' was trying to amass enough signatures to become eligible as a write-in candidate for mayor, which may have alerted one of his potential (and legitimate) rivals to do some asking around with the county clerk's office.
I'm sure this had all kinds of fraud smells floating around it and all it took was a legitimate cause to investigate.
Consider volunteering for your local elections so that you understand the checks and balances in place to prevent fraud in your own county.
The culprit was caught here before any fraudulent votes were cast:
> The defendants were trying to get the registrar's office to send them mail in ballots for the fake voters. No votes were ever actually cast. The registrar caught on quickly and flagged the applications so nobody actually voted.
That's an example of the system working correctly.
(Attacking the person): This fallacy occurs when, instead of addressing someone's argument or position, you irrelevantly attack the person or some aspect of the person who is making the argument.
>Personally, I don't know how to reconcile being told that voter fraud is exceedingly rare when I see articles like this where individuals and teams of people are caught falsifying information on this scale.
Why? These articles are incidents of exceedingly rare voter fraud. And it's worth noting that this wasn't an example of what, say, the Trump campaign is alleging (i.e., that ballots have been falsified), but rather an fraudulent attempt at registration (and also nomination as a candidate). No one argues that voting irregularities never happen anywhere, just that the system is fine and these incidents are, indeed rare and caught when they happen.
>If the process for identifying fraud isn't particularly robust or thorough, how can you legitimately say fraud is extremely rare?
This question makes the assumption that the process for identifying fraud "isn't particularly robust or thorough", which in turn seems to be begging the question.
There is no one process for identifying fraud, there are many processes as the elections are run by the States, not some, "central voting authority."
That being said, in California, specifically, it's analogous to dual-factor authentication.
On your ballot, you write your signature. You have ballot checkers who look at that signature, and check it against one already on file with the State Government, from sources like a voter registration application or driver's license.
So to make a claim that, "Fraud is high enough to make a difference," - let's say, 0.1% over those ballots not already rejected to be charitable, you would have to fake a percentage of 22 million votes (assuming rounding up to 10 million).
So keep in mind, 220,000 ballots were already rejected for not being able to be verified by the State. Beyond that, the 0.1% requirement would mean that 21,780 additional ballots within the remaining 21,780,000 ballots would need to be, "fraudulent," in order to make the election, "not valid," using a charitable definition.
What is the definition of fraudulent? It doesn't mean, "I don't like this person who voted," or, "voting with malicious intent." It means - the law was broken, creating illegal interference with the process of an election. Election fraud can take place around in-person voting and absentee/mail-in voting. It can occur at different points of the election process, from registration to the tallying of ballots. Types of election fraud include [ballot stuffing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud#Ballot_stuffin...), voter registration fraud, absentee/mail-in ballot vote fraud, and using fraudulent signatures.
To support the claim, "fraud is not extremely rare," you would have to demonstrate that 21,780 ballots were illegal, by either party mind you, through any combination of the above reasons. Or, you would have to at least define how many votes need to be illegal in order to mean, "not extremely rare," and then demonstrate a case for why we passed that threshold.
I have not read any convincing arguments on this entire thread demonstrating anything convincing even in the slightest, either evidence based or even just a semblance of a rational argument explaining why it might be true. All I read on here is hand waving ignorance and raw emotions.
On the other hand, what I see election authorities in California do, is A) Maintaining a list of possible registered voters or drivers licenses tied to addresses with signatures on file. B) Cross referencing those signatures on the ballots submitted. C) Allowing observers in to observe the process at any time.
It is unfortunate that the article doesn't detail how these two were caught. Personally, I don't know how to reconcile being told that voter fraud is exceedingly rare when I see articles like this where individuals and teams of people are caught falsifying information on this scale. What if these people only falsified 20 identities instead of 8000? Would they have been caught?
If the process for identifying fraud isn't particularly robust or thorough, how can you legitimately say fraud is extremely rare?