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Comment by tomohawk | Hacker News Reader

Not sure that will help things like this:

EDIT: Based on comments - this is a video that records the president stating that people in the country illegally (non-citizens) should not fear any repercussions from voting in the election.

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The woman in that video is asking for clarification on what happens if she herself, a citizen, votes. Obama literally says in the video that she's a U.S. citizen.

She wants to know if immigration is going to go through voting records and discover the place she lives may also have undocumented immigrants living there.

No, that's not what was said. What was said that immigration isn't keying off voter rolls to launch investigations. I'll leave it up to you to contrive all sorts of examples where this could be abused and "they're" "taking" "muh" "freedoms", but this is a totally invented scandal.

As for why people downvoted you, probably because watching some shakey-handed screen recording and presenting it as some great revelatory fact predisposes the reader to thinking this has to be a joke.

The link is to a right wing propaganda site. I'd like to see the unedited video. I'm pretty sure President Obama was referring to the American born children of undocumented immigrants.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLLt-a6dI_0

I'll update with a time link to the section in question in a moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLLt-a6dI_0&t=3m20s

I personally am quite sure they mean to talk about citizens with undocumented relatives voting, but the exchange is not well done, it sounds like they are talking about non citizens voting (of course undocumented people probably aren't registered to begin with).

Oh you mean Fox News took an out of context exchange and re-purposed it to sound like something way more nefarious? Well NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS WOULD I HAVE GUESSED...

Even though the question might imply that illegal immigrants should vote, Obama's answer certainly doesn't. I've seen the fully answer and his answer is along the lines of "Children of illegal immigrants who are born in the US and thus are citizens but have family who are illegal immigrants, have a greater reason to vote because they are representing their family and friends". I disagree with that logic but Obama certainly wasn't implying that non-citizens should vote.

I think what he's saying is that there should more voter id laws and making sure people who really have the legal right to vote can vote and those who don't do not. As a person who's in charge of making sure our systems are secure, I must say that the amount of security in the voting process and the verification of the person voting is almost non-existent.

At least in San Jose / Santa Clara county where I went to cast an early vote, there's no verification of who you say you are. They only ask for your name and address (pretty easy to get). Maybe they have access to DMV records (a recent photo of you) on the computer they're looking at, when you provide them you're info? If so that's a good step, but I doubt they do that (what about for people who don't drive)? They also do zero checking when you're dropping off someone else's ballot in person. There's a spot on the back of the envelope where it's required to put the name of the person who's dropping of the ballot if it's not the person who cast the ballot, and no one even checks that.

Aside from Diebold etc.[1], the only fraud happening in our elections are a) gerrymandering and b) racist voter suppression laws like those in North Carolina, where a state senator admitted as much in a televised interview.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Democracy

That's an extremely strong claim to back up with no evidence. The commenter above you has given at least anecdotal evidence of substantial opportunity for fraud, and we already know motive is strong on both sides.

What measure of proof do you require?

Well, how about the same ID you'd need to board a plane or buy alcohol or deal with being stopped by a cop?

Let's start with that. To reduce forgery, match the ID against an image of it on a computer. Better yet, scan it into a computer and have the computer do the matching.

Also, take a new picture. This can be used to help catch and prosecute any remaining fraud. More importantly, such fraud would be strongly discouraged by the increased possibility of being caught.

Hmmm. Let's try again.

GP wrote:

"...the only fraud happening in our elections are a) gerrymandering and b) racist voter suppression laws..."

You wrote:

"That's an extremely strong claim to back up with no evidence."

I asked:

"What measure of proof do you require?"

Honestly, I expected something related to proving gerrymandering, disenfranchisement, or something.

If John votes and pretends to be Jim (who doesn't vote), how would we know?

In my jurisdiction, John had to show some kind of ID. Recent utility bill with matching address. Worker photo ID. It was a pretty long list.

The idea is the state will no disenfranchise you for making a mistake while making the cost (risk) of bulk voter fraud higher as to be infeasible.

How do you know people aren't double voting in areas that don't check IDs? Seems like an easy untraceable/unprovable way to commit voting fraud.

Trump supporters just tried this and were in fact caught.

Nobody with sense would try, it carries severe punishment (it's a felony) for virtually no benefit to the person taking the risk, and really virtually no effect on the election either.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/10/2...

In my experience in the US, you have a registered polling station where you are allowed to cast your ballot. When you arrive, they cross your name off the list. If I'm only allowed to vote in one location, and that location only allows me to vote once, that should prevent double voting, even if I'm not who I say I am. Or rather, I'm not going to vote twice as the same person.

Is this the case across the US?

Whether the voter registration rolls are up-to-date, that's another matter as well. And double voting is only one type of fraud.

Meta: Please do not down vote legit questions. Election administration in the USA is arcane. This is a teachable moment.

> How do you know people aren't double voting in areas that don't check IDs?

Because it doesn't fucking matter? Also going to need to see some receipts for that.

When voting in person, the poll worker is checking your name & address against what's listed in the poll book. Not listed? You get a provisional ballot. Two people try to vote as the same person? That'll be caught and investigated. Show up to vote as someone else (who doesn't vote)? Well, that's plausible.

Most of these kinds of "fraud" are actually voter registration "errors", where someone votes in the wrong jurisdiction. Like Ann Coulter did.

As for postal ballots, ya. The voter signature and proxy name are mostly for after the fact investigations if problems need to be resolved. You should attend your canvassing board meetings to hear all the nonsense. Husband and wives swapping envelopes. A couple putting two ballots into one envelope to save a stamp. Ballot from a prior election. Soiled ballots. Missing ballot, so voter just used another piece of paper (still legal). Etc, etc.

That spouses, job bosses, church leaders, command officers "help" others vote (the correct way) is established and well documented. But society seems to have decided that the benefits of enfranchisement outweigh the downsides.

Remarkably, comparatively, there's very little abuse of postal ballots. We're talking 10s and 100s vs 1,000s and 100,000s who are disenfranchised by other means. Caging, gerrymandering, underprovisioning voting machines and polls sites in key areas, not counting any votes on spanish language ballots, calling in a bomb scare and shutting down the central count which then has a mysterious miraculous election result, ad nauseam.

There's no shortage of problems with our districting, campaigning, elections, voting, tabulation, vendor relations, etc. If you only care to look. But please don't make the mistake that retail voter fraud is a significant factor.

Couldn't the concern be easily resolved by somebody explaining how voter registration works? I.e. How the government confirms your citizenship? And verifies your ID at the polling place? Then the discussion could shift to how thorough that process is.

Love the downvotes with no comments. The post is about the integrity of the voting process, and the link I provide goes right to that topic.

It's someone with a video camera pointed at their screen breathing heavily. Just post the original video: https://youtu.be/oLLt-a6dI_0?t=203

Also, if you watch his entire response it's clear he interpreted the question as a person legally able to vote, but has family members who are undocumented and are afraid of voting for that reason.

That said, it does sound really bad. Especially how nonchalant the president is about breaking immigration laws.

Is it nonchalent about immigration laws, or is it just that he is much more interested in the protection of the ability of every person with a right to vote to exercise that right without coercion, particularly from a government agency? To my mind the latter is much more fundamental and important than the former.

I didn't downvote, but you're making us watch a video with minimal explanation why it's worth it. That requires going to another room and finding headphones, so not going to bother.

I think you'd have had more success if you explained your opinion instead of only posting "I am skeptical, here's a video".

It's also against HN guidelines to comment on downvotes as it generally doesn't add anything to the discussion.

The comment is worthless because nobody wants to watch a YouTube link to figure out what you're trying to say.

Ironic, given that your original post just barfed up a link "with no comments". If you can't bothered to do a little typing, I can't be bothered to watch the whackadoodle video from Breitbart.

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