US 2020 Presidential Election prediction thread

[Admiral Yi]

Edit: I'm not saying that the people who are silent are experts, I'm saying from what I'm aware the experts aren't vocal.

You just contradicted yourself.

Some people are not vocal.  They are experts.

So how do you know these people are experts?

[Sheilbh]

Edit: I'm not saying that the people who are silent are experts, I'm saying from what I'm aware the experts aren't vocal.

You just contradicted yourself.

Some people are not vocal.  They are experts.

So how do you know these people are experts?

What?

I know of experts in cybersecurity who raise lots of concerns about the safety of voting machines (especially in the US). The point here is there are experts - they are vocal (not the other way round). This adds credibility to it not just being a Democratic talking point.

I am not aware of experts in other areas raising concerns about voter fraud. Maybe they are but I don't know about it - I work in a slightly related area to cybersecurity so follow it more closely, or maybe the media don't report it. Alternately the experts have concerns but don't raise them because of their politics, or the experts don't have concerns. Of those the two that seem most likely are: I'm ignorant (v likely) or the experts don't have concerns so they aren't vocal (possible). So, here I could be wrong or there are experts - they are not vocal (not the other way round).

[Admiral Yi]

What?

I know of experts in cybersecurity who raise lots of concerns about the safety of voting machines (especially in the US). The point here is there are experts - they are vocal (not the other way round). This adds credibility to it not just being a Democratic talking point.

I am not aware of experts in other areas raising concerns about voter fraud. Maybe they are but I don't know about it - I work in a slightly related area to cybersecurity so follow it more closely, or maybe the media don't report it. Alternately the experts have concerns but don't raise them because of their politics, or the experts don't have concerns. Of those the two that seem most likely are: I'm ignorant (v likely) or the experts don't have concerns so they aren't vocal (possible). So, here I could be wrong or there are experts - they are not vocal (not the other way round).

You presumably consider the people who express concerns about cybersecurity* to be experts because you know something about their degrees, experience, and certification in cybersecurity.  Are these the same experts who are not being vocal about issues with voter IDs?  Do you think that same skill set qualifies them to render an expert opinion on the efficacy of voter ID laws?  Or is there a similar group who are experts in voter IDs?  If so, how do you know they are experts in that field?

*We might have talked about this before, but whereas I concede that voter rolls or the like could be hackable, are you sure these same experts said that stand-alone voting machines, which have no connection to the internet, are also hackable?  In reading about stuxnet I learned that hacking a self-contained, sealed off system such as that controlling the Iranian centrifuges is very, very technically challenging.  It seems to me that's what would have to be done with voting machines.

[Josquius]

I decided to join in.
Completely un-researched and based on a minimum of thought

[Admiral Yi]

Someone told Squeeze pot is legal in Colorado.

[Sheilbh]

You presumably consider the people who express concerns about cybersecurity* to be experts because you know something about their degrees, experience, and certification in cybersecurity.  Are these the same experts who are not being vocal about issues with voter IDs?  Do you think that same skill set qualifies them to render an expert opinion on the efficacy of voter ID laws?  Or is there a similar group who are experts in voter IDs?  If so, how do you know they are experts in that field?

The middle choice - I don't know who the experts would be on voter fraud. Presumably political science people? I'm not sure. As I say I might be ignorant and they actually are constantly in a panic.

*We might have talked about this before, but whereas I concede that voter rolls or the like could be hackable, are you sure these same experts said that stand-alone voting machines, which have no connection to the internet, are also hackable?  In reading about stuxnet I learned that hacking a self-contained, sealed off system such as that controlling the Iranian centrifuges is very, very technically challenging.  It seems to me that's what would have to be done with voting machines.

Yeah. A lot of the concerns are more organisational than technical.

But on the technical I mean they are "connected" at some point - so typically once a new ballot is designed that's uploaded, usually through a USB. That's not incredibly difficult for a sophisticated, state-sponsored group to target. It's also worth noting that an attack on US elections isn't necessarily that they fiddle the numbers, it could just be attacking an availability attack - that would in itself undermine the certainty of an election. Also obviously if you were looking to fiddle the numbers you only need to hit a few swing states and probably specific counties within those states.

I think the bigger concern is that it's so decentralised in the US so you have multiple layers of local government involved, multiple vendors who provide the software or the machines and all of those parties will have their own levels of information security and their own budget for it. So it's not even necessarily the systems themselves that are an issue it's the vote counting, recording and transmission that's done on other systems - that can be more secure if you have a physical record that it can be audited against. And you know one of the biggest cyber attacks in the UK was of the NHS by a North Korean backed group, it wasn't deliberately targetting the NHS but basically brought a large number of systems down for a period of time - that was because there was a piece of software that was out of date/no longer supported by Microsoft. It can be that easy - so it relies on each party involved in American elections to make sure they are properly updating their software etc etc.

So yes the Iranian nuclear program is self-contained and sealed off and probably has very high levels of security that make it challenging. I am less sure that, say, the Broward County election supervisors have the same level of security. From my private sector perspective it looks like if a client had a core function, like say their payment processing, run by a load of decentralised entities each using different vendors to support it and no common security standard. That would cause me to panic and be shouting that there's a big red flag

My view is if you have an election system, with a consistent, evolving high level of security then you can probably move to voting machines. If you don't then I think it is far better and far more secure to have a physical record/ballot that you can audit against.

The other thing is if there's a vulnerability - so let's say some malware is identified in one of the bits of software that the election relies on - it is normally very difficult to definitively rule out what hasn't happened. I think it's really rare that the security logs will be good enough to definitively state what has or hasn't happened. So you are in shades of grey and making assessments based on a limited set out information. That's fine for most systems, I think in itself that would cause an issue in terms of election security/confidence in the result.

[DGuller]

I'm concerned about voting machines whenever I have to do things like get my driver's license renewed online.  Such experiences inevitably make me think that cyber-security of government services relies on the honor system among the hackers.

[grumbler]

You probably should stop reading anyone who claims that the number of cases of voter fraud is exactly equal to the number of convictions for voter fraud.  Who is that, by the way?

First Google search result: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/08/06/a-comprehensive-investigation-of-voter-impersonation-finds-31-credible-incidents-out-of-one-billion-ballots-cast/.  It isn't stated explicitly that number of allegations is equal to the number of actual cases, but every argument is stacked in a way to lead you to that conclusion, with no arguments presented to qualify the implied conclusion.

Did you read this before using it as evidence?

I've been tracking allegations of fraud for years now, including the fraud ID laws are designed to stop. In 2008, when the Supreme Court weighed in on voter ID, I looked at every single allegation put before the Court. And since then, I've been following reports wherever they crop up.

New evidence that voter ID laws 'skew democracy' in favor of white Republicans

To be clear, I'm not just talking about prosecutions. I track any specific, credible allegation that someone may have pretended to be someone else at the polls, in any way that an ID law could fix.

So far, I've found about 31 different incidents (some of which involve multiple ballots) since 2000, anywhere in the country. If you want to check my work, you can read a comprehensive list of the incidents below.

To put this in perspective, the 31 incidents below come in the context of general, primary, special, and municipal elections from 2000 through 2014. In general and primary elections alone, more than 1 billion ballots were cast in that period.

Some of these 31 incidents have been thoroughly investigated (including some prosecutions). But many have not. Based on how other claims have turned out, I'd bet that some of the 31 will end up debunked: a problem with matching people from one big computer list to another, or a data entry error, or confusion between two different people with the same name, or someone signing in on the wrong line of a pollbook.

Note that he specifically rejects the idea that you claim he is espousing, that "that number of allegations is equal to the number of actual cases," but I suppose that the fact that he is your chosen expert is going to be lost on you.

Now, to be sure, he is looking (only, apparently) at potential voter fraud that a voter ID law would preclude, but even at that does NOT say that convictions = cases.

[The Minsky Moment]

Trump has the right idea for stopping voter fraud - cancel the elections, designate him as President for Life.  No voting, no voter fraud!

[DGuller]

You probably should stop reading anyone who claims that the number of cases of voter fraud is exactly equal to the number of convictions for voter fraud.  Who is that, by the way?

First Google search result: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/08/06/a-comprehensive-investigation-of-voter-impersonation-finds-31-credible-incidents-out-of-one-billion-ballots-cast/.  It isn't stated explicitly that number of allegations is equal to the number of actual cases, but every argument is stacked in a way to lead you to that conclusion, with no arguments presented to qualify the implied conclusion.

Did you read this before using it as evidence?

I've been tracking allegations of fraud for years now, including the fraud ID laws are designed to stop. In 2008, when the Supreme Court weighed in on voter ID, I looked at every single allegation put before the Court. And since then, I've been following reports wherever they crop up.

New evidence that voter ID laws 'skew democracy' in favor of white Republicans

To be clear, I'm not just talking about prosecutions. I track any specific, credible allegation that someone may have pretended to be someone else at the polls, in any way that an ID law could fix.

So far, I've found about 31 different incidents (some of which involve multiple ballots) since 2000, anywhere in the country. If you want to check my work, you can read a comprehensive list of the incidents below.

To put this in perspective, the 31 incidents below come in the context of general, primary, special, and municipal elections from 2000 through 2014. In general and primary elections alone, more than 1 billion ballots were cast in that period.

Some of these 31 incidents have been thoroughly investigated (including some prosecutions). But many have not. Based on how other claims have turned out, I'd bet that some of the 31 will end up debunked: a problem with matching people from one big computer list to another, or a data entry error, or confusion between two different people with the same name, or someone signing in on the wrong line of a pollbook.

Note that he specifically rejects the idea that you claim he is espousing, that "that number of allegations is equal to the number of actual cases," but I suppose that the fact that he is your chosen expert is going to be lost on you.

Now, to be sure, he is looking (only, apparently) at potential voter fraud that a voter ID law would preclude, but even at that does NOT say that convictions = cases.

Allegations, prosecutions, rumors, the same kind of bias is at play.  Counting cases anyone other that the perpetrator has an inkling about is a biased estimate.  When I said "number of convictions", I didn't mean to differentiate between convictions, acquittals, and allegations; I meant to differentiate between knowable and unknowable.

[crazy canuck]

You probably should stop reading anyone who claims that the number of cases of voter fraud is exactly equal to the number of convictions for voter fraud.  Who is that, by the way?

First Google search result: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/08/06/a-comprehensive-investigation-of-voter-impersonation-finds-31-credible-incidents-out-of-one-billion-ballots-cast/.  It isn't stated explicitly that number of allegations is equal to the number of actual cases, but every argument is stacked in a way to lead you to that conclusion, with no arguments presented to qualify the implied conclusion.

Did you read this before using it as evidence?

I've been tracking allegations of fraud for years now, including the fraud ID laws are designed to stop. In 2008, when the Supreme Court weighed in on voter ID, I looked at every single allegation put before the Court. And since then, I've been following reports wherever they crop up.

New evidence that voter ID laws 'skew democracy' in favor of white Republicans

To be clear, I'm not just talking about prosecutions. I track any specific, credible allegation that someone may have pretended to be someone else at the polls, in any way that an ID law could fix.

So far, I've found about 31 different incidents (some of which involve multiple ballots) since 2000, anywhere in the country. If you want to check my work, you can read a comprehensive list of the incidents below.

To put this in perspective, the 31 incidents below come in the context of general, primary, special, and municipal elections from 2000 through 2014. In general and primary elections alone, more than 1 billion ballots were cast in that period.

Some of these 31 incidents have been thoroughly investigated (including some prosecutions). But many have not. Based on how other claims have turned out, I'd bet that some of the 31 will end up debunked: a problem with matching people from one big computer list to another, or a data entry error, or confusion between two different people with the same name, or someone signing in on the wrong line of a pollbook.

Note that he specifically rejects the idea that you claim he is espousing, that "that number of allegations is equal to the number of actual cases," but I suppose that the fact that he is your chosen expert is going to be lost on you.

Now, to be sure, he is looking (only, apparently) at potential voter fraud that a voter ID law would preclude, but even at that does NOT say that convictions = cases.

Allegations, prosecutions, rumors, the same kind of bias is at play.  Counting cases anyone other that the perpetrator has an inkling about is a biased estimate.  When I said "number of convictions", I didn't mean to differentiate between convictions, acquittals, and allegations; I meant to differentiate between knowable and unknowable.

Which is why Grumbler responded the way he did - If you are talking about things happening for which there is no evidence, and there are agencies whose job it is to detect that very thing, then you are in kookoo conspiracy territory.

[Barrister]

Which is why Grumbler responded the way he did - If you are talking about things happening for which there is no evidence, and there are agencies whose job it is to detect that very thing, then you are in kookoo conspiracy territory.

This is always a challenge though in trying to get a number of a crime rate for any kind of offence.  It's not "kookoo conspiracy territory" to say that not all sex assaults that happen are reported to the police - we know this to be true.  There are various means that researches will do different surveys to try and get at the "real" sex assault rate.

When you have an offence with no obvious victim it's at least conceivable that the actual rate of the offence is higher than the amount of times it's been charged.

[crazy canuck]

Which is why Grumbler responded the way he did - If you are talking about things happening for which there is no evidence, and there are agencies whose job it is to detect that very thing, then you are in kookoo conspiracy territory.

This is always a challenge though in trying to get a number of a crime rate for any kind of offence.  It's not "kookoo conspiracy territory" to say that not all sex assaults that happen are reported to the police - we know this to be true.  There are various means that researches will do different surveys to try and get at the "real" sex assault rate.

When you have an offence with no obvious victim it's at least conceivable that the actual rate of the offence is higher than the amount of times it's been charged.

We know that sexaul assaults which are not reported to the police occur because we have other evidence of it occurring. 

[Barrister]

I decided to join in.
Completely un-researched and based on a minimum of thought

Biden is up 8.8 points over Trump in Minnesota.  I know Trump thinks he can try to flip the state, but this was the one state in the union that voted for Mondale in 1984!

[Eddie Teach]

Well, it was also his home state. Not that that helped Al Gore, Mitt Romney or Donald Trump.