A Report on the Flawed 2016 Democratic Primaries

https://medium.com/@spencergundert/hillary-clinton-and-elect...

Is this a direction more modern, western democracies seem to be heading? I feel a loss of democratic appeal and subsequent machinations of all kinds by apparatuses of state to keep in power. Democratic in name, but the number of options available to the public limited to what is in line with what public officials think of as good sense.

Examples:

-DNC machinating to get Clinton elected as candidate. The public needed Russia (!) for a fresh dosis of unpopular truths about those machinations. This documents more evidence on machinations.

-The unpopular and undemocratic European Union. Examples abound. The best being the EU-constitution: struck down in popular referendums, flown in as a treaty.

-In my country, the Netherlands, a referendum in which the public voted against an EU-agreement with Ukraine (wholy within law, with very obvious machinations by state and political parties), on which both the government and EU reneged

Counter example:

-Brexit

Disclaimers

-Please, don't hit on the 'red herrings' (if any), like 'undemocratic EU'. I see it as both a fact (imho, populus does not recognize European parliament) and an opinion (mostly in the more populist parties over Europe). Not center to my view of democracies limiting decision power of the populus. -The 'public officials' need not be those paid by the state. But more broadly: those aspiring to have their organisations have a say over public policy.

Either you overcome the rigging, or you STFU and unify with the corruption. As Sarah Silverman would say, stop being ridiculous.

Besides, what are you going to do about it? Vote for Trump?

The fact that you have to state that after being given this whole bunch of good evidence is a big part of the problem.

http://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/ he has some good points.

My country, Ireland, briefly flirted with the idea of voting machines areound the same time, and decided to scrap them at enormous expense and go back to paper ballots: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/opposition-condemns-e-voting-...

> The public needed Russia (!) for a fresh dosis of unpopular truths about those machinations. This documents more evidence on machinations.

I'm not convinced the "Russian hackers" angle is correct, it seems like a convenient cover story for the DNC, to draw a distinction between Hillary and Trump with regard to Putin. They know many older voters don't understand this stuff (no offense to older HN readers!) and will likely buy it. It's just like the North Korean hackers story for the Sony hack. It could just as easily have been disgruntled DNC insiders, and Wikileaks is happy to have the real source of the leak disguised.

Do people honestly believe that evidence of electoral fraud is some kind of Russian scheme? Those claims strike me as an attempt to deflect the issue by the increasingly embattled affected candidate. That narrative seems to be designed to imply that the revealed wrongdoing is actually worth ignoring.

It's the kind of power where, upon victory, you can erase how you won.

I think John Oliver described it best in his video a couple of days back. People seem to be motivated by feelings, not facts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNdkrtfZP8I

And now we know that the United States is also not what it claims to be.

Sad.

In the US you spent a year choosing your candidates, but behind closed doors one of those parties spent all their time trying to push one candidate whilst the other party spent all their time trying to stop another.

The Australian system seems a little more honest, even though the roles of PM and President are quite different. We can elect a PM and the party can then choose to throw them out the week after. This happens frequently.

Regardless of the pros and cons of the US system, it does seem weird that Mr Head Honcho can end up not being politically aligned with the legislature. So much potential for stalemate, as evidenced by the past six years.

Until substantiated it's just a way for the DNC to deflect from the corruption, 'Russia wants you to vote Republican, don't fall for it'.

While it was written for the creationism/evolution argument, this[1] article is one of the better descriptions of this mode of thought.

While the typical HN reader uses language to convey ideas, to the creationist or the RNC attendees on John Oliver's show language instead is used first for phatic expression and social hierarchy. This is a language barrier; one side argues facts, while the other side defers to authority and feelings. Before any real communication can happen between the two sides, you first have to solve the language barrier.

[1] http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/05/31/more-than-just-resi...

Shortly before the primary election, the California Secretary of State issued a clarifying statement about how the process worked for NPP voters. It included these options for NPP voters who wanted to vote in a primary:

  Contact your county elections office no later than May 31
  to request a [party specific] vote-by-mail ballot... OR

  Bring your vote-by-mail ballot to an early voting location
  or the polls on Election Day and exchange it for a ballot 
  with presidential candidates

  NOTE: If you have lost your original vote-by-mail ballot,
  you will have to vote a provisional ballot at the polls—your 
  vote will still be counted.  

Since I was planning to vote in person anyway, and since I wanted to vote in the Democratic primary, I decided to bring my valid vote-by-mail ballot with me to exchange for a standard non-provisional Democratic party ballot at my assigned polling place.

When I got there (the lobby of the local Catholic church), I waited (briefly) in line, presented my mail-in ballot, and was told that exchanges for Democratic ballots were not being allowed. I mentioned the Secretary of States memo, and was (politely) told by the volunteer at the desk that they they knew nothing of this, and had been instructed that only provisional ballots were to be given.

Not wanting to hold other people up, and not wanting to accept a provisional ballot that would not show up in the end-of-day count, I left my place in line, went outside, and researched my options on my cell phone.

I discovered that indeed, Contra Costa County historically has had a policy of not exchanging mail in NPP ballots for "real" partisan ballots, that the Secretary of State's memo was part of the attempt to make clear that this was against state law, and that the day before the election the County had begrudgingly agreed to temporarily change its policy:

  After hearing reports of Contra Costa County’s practice,
  the Secretary of State’s Office contacted local elections
  officials. On Monday, they announced they would change
  their practice and offer these voters replacement ballots.

But apparently no one had told the volunteers working at the polls!

So seeing no way to solve this on my own, I went though the line again, and accepted a Democratic "provisional" ballot. I was told that I needed to take the "provisional voting class", and directed to a table with 4 or 5 confused people already seated at it. A few minutes later, another volunteer (elderly, bewildered, apparently having a very hard day) tried unsuccessfully to give us instructions on how to fill out the form on which we were to affirm our identity, electoral status, and reason for requesting a provisional ballot.

Then the volunteer left, and we filled out the forms as best we could. The process was sufficiently confusing that one of the voters gave up and left. After 5 minutes, the volunteer returned, and then mentioned that I wasn't supposed to have filled out the line that said "Reason for requesting provisional ballot", crossed out my complicated answer.

He then went to fetch the actual ballots for us. Most of us filled them out at the table, although I think one person went to a voting booth to do so. A second person gave up at this time. Or maybe they hadn't understood that they were supposed to sign and seal the envelope and drop it in the box on the way out? Or maybe they had to go to the bathroom and planned to return.

Eventually, the volunteer returned and I was told I was told to tear off the "receipt" from the provisional ballot and drop the ballot itself in an official looking bag next to the exit. The instructions on the receipt said that after 30 days, I could check online or by phone to see whether my ballot was accepted.

I came home, and immediately filled out and faxed a Voter Complaint form, which I hoped the State would be sympathetic too as the County was directly disobeying their directives and failing to uphold their agreement: http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/additional-elections-informa...

I never heard back any followup from the complaint. I've checked online several times, but 45 days later it still shows up as "No ballot found". That's right, so far as I can tell my vote was neither counted nor rejected, just lost. I might try phoning or going in person to see if I can learn more, but at this point I feel it's a lost cause.

Edit: I should point out that I don't blame the volunteers --- they were poorly trained, and doing as they are told. But why are we relying on poorly trained volunteers for our elections? I do blame the County, since they failed to follow through on their pledge to the State and the press, but assume this is mostly poor communication rather than any specific ill-intent.

Shorten was elected as the Labor party leader by a combined vote of the parliamentary party and party members.

The crux of the problem is that the majority of the voting public has been conditioned to treat their politics religiously. When people are organized as such, the diocese can do whatever it wants and label the collateral damage as heresy.

Could you explain this to a Brit? I'm interpreting your statement as when you register to vote that you have to indicate which party you prefer - is this really true?

If so, are you allowed to vote for the other party?

For example, the Democratic New York primary is a closed primary which means only voters registered as Democrats have the right to vote. However, the Democratic Californian primary is an open primary which allows voters registered as Democrats or as NPP to vote.

Voters can change their party preference at any time but they may be required to be registered under a specific party for a certain period of time in order to be given the right to vote in some States. For instance, in order to vote in New York you needed to be a registered Democrat for the past 6 months prior to the election date. This is a disadvantage to candidates who are well supported by independent voters (NPP) as many of them did not change their registration on time. That said, these rules are those of the party and while they can be considered unfair, this doesn't qualify for election fraud.

An election fraud tactic the report mentions is "registration tampering" which consists in switching the registration of voters without their consent and knowledge in order to suppress their right to vote. There have been numerous reports of registration tampering across most States with voters being switched from Democrats to Republicans or from Democrats to NPP and so on. Registrations seem to have been switch electronically (change in the database) some even involving forged signatures.

The confusing part is that the "Primary Elections" (which are held according to the rules of the party) are often run by the counties according to state rules, and are combined with other local elections that are open to all registered voters. Some parties in some states only allow those registered as belonging to their party to vote in their primary, while others allow "unaffiliated" voters to participate. The result is an mish-mash of private party rules and official state rules.

Party affiliation and primary elections have an odd semi-official status. Statistically, a little over 2/3 of the otherwise eligible voters are "registered to vote". Of these, about 1/3 are registered as belonging to the Democratic Party, about 1/3 are registered to the Republican Party, and about 1/3 are "unaffiliated". Something less than 5% of voters are registered with a "third party", and in recent history candidates from these parties haven't played much of a role except as a "spoiler".

Anyway, the current situation is that both Republican and Democratic parties have just officially chosen their candidates. The Republicans have allowed the public to "democratically" chose Donald Trump, much to the distress of many prominent members of the party who feel he does not espouse their values. The Democrat Party has chosen Hillary Clinton, but many (including many supporters of Bernie Sanders) feel she was actually selected by the party as their nominee well in advance, and that the "Primary Election" was being treated as a formality rather than a selection process.

The "General Election" for President happens this November 2016. All registered voters are allowed to vote for whomever they choose at this point. They can even write in candidates who do not appear on the ballot. But unless something unexpected happens to Clinton or Trump before then (or unless this is finally the year that a 3rd Party candidate breaks through) one of them will be elected to office at that point, and will begin serving in January 2017.

As a fun exercise - review the AU constitution and find all the references to the role of PM.

Sean Kelly writing in TheMonthly(.com.au) recently observed after the last election:

"It’s a mistake to think that there is such a thing as the national will or the voice of the people that is somehow expressed through the electoral process, or that an election result can be construed strictly as approval or disapproval of a set of policies. People vote in all sorts of ways for all sorts of reasons – personal benefit, an attempt at dispassionate policy assessment, preference for individual politicians, habit – and the number of votes that decide any given election is always a small fraction of the population.

"If there’s one thing this election result has told us, it’s that the appeal of both major parties is still on the decline. Twenty-five percent of voters put neither Liberal nor Labor first; yet collectively they are only represented by 3% of the lower house and perhaps 11% of the senate. (Whether it makes sense to think of them collectively is a separate question.) That’s a quarter of the country who look at parliament and don’t see themselves represented."

From a purely leadership POV, US and AU have the same problem that >50% of people don't want the leader that they have - due primarily to the fixation of a) a single leadership role (bring back the triumvirates! :) and b) two-party politics.

When you're informed you only have two choices - you're probably not in a democracy.

But no, let's divine the will of the people from tealeaves instead.

The quality of representation is a different matter. But yes, (representative) democracy is broken. Just as any collective policy making strategy that requires an expert majority.

And of course this does not mean that there was no collusion between DNC and the Hillary campaign, and so on.

So far this is exactly the primary process. The difference is that the US one is big. In time and space. It takes many months, and potential nominees know that they are in the race from the first moment, because they know that politics is a lot more about showing up, moving your voters, than being on the ballot. (See the NRA, Church of Scientology, and other religious groups.)

Here's an interview with Julian Assange when asked about the source of the leaks, with direct quotes from Clinton's campaign manager, quoting unnamed experts: https://youtu.be/axuJfX3cO9Q?t=12m50s

"On Sunday morning, the issue erupted, as Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, argued on ABC’s “This Week” that the emails were leaked “by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump” citing “experts” but offering no other evidence."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/25/us/politics/donald-trump-r...

I mean anyone can quote anonymous "experts" to craft a narrative. Doesn't make it true.

Here is a better example (ignore the cheesy setup, the actual analysis is very insightful into Trump's media manipulation tactics):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55NxKENplG4

If you look at his blog posts written during the primary, he was saying quite early that Trump would win also.

However, more than one user emailed to plead the case for the article, arguing that it is substantive and pointing out that the discussion has so far mostly remained civil (a small miracle in relative terms), so we'll try turning the flags off on this one.

If the thread gets nasty we'll have to turn them back on, so if you add a comment here, please ensure that it is extra civil and substantive.

We actually got lucky during the cold war in that the other side was fundamentally quite stupid and bound to lose their power from a lack of economic performance.

Now there's a new crop of autocrats freed from the constraints of ideology. It appears that democracy isn't actually necessary for economic development and they're raising a crop of apolitical hedonists – well-fed, entertained an thoroughly harmless for their grip on power. When a bit more loyalty is needed, a little round of in-group -> out-group hatred usually fixes it.

China, Russia, Turkey, Victor Orban, and now Donald Trump: they're betting that people prefer "democracy on rails" to the sometimes scary or frustrating life in actual freedom.

(Oh, and the EU is obviously perfectly democratic, that just doesn't depend on your or anybody's (populous does not recognize...) opinion)

One good thing came of this. When I read your comment, it occurred to me to add "Presume good faith" to our provisional list of new HN guidelines.

The way flagging works is that users click the 'flag' link that appears after the timestamp underneath a story title. A user needs a small amount of karma (31 or more) before such links appear. Flags have a number of effects, one of which is to downweight a story so that it is more likely to fall in rank. If there are enough flags on a story, the software will eventually kill it (close it to new comments and hide it from users except those with 'showdead' set to 'yes' in their profile).

The purpose of flagging is to indicate that a story does not belong on HN. Frivolous flagging—e.g. flagging a story that's clearly on-topic by the site guidelines just because one personally dislikes it—eventually gets an account's flagging privileges taken away. But there's a new 'hide' link for people to click if they'd just like not to see a story.

Flagging of comments is important, too. If you see a comment that breaks the HN guidelines, such as by being uncivil, you should flag it. But there's one extra hoop to jump through in the comment case: you have to click on the comment's timestamp to go to its page, then click 'flag' at the top. That's a speed bump to dampen impulsive flagging.

I only see real Democracy working in small, relatively wealthy and homogeneous countries. As soon as you go >X for some value of X where X is the population size, it starts to rapidly fall apart.

Maybe too many people introduce too much chaos and political structures hate chaos. More than that, the markets hate chaos. If you let the people actually control things, you introduce the potential for rapid change, instability, etc, all things that Big Money hates.

This is why they want larger governments, single currencies, centralization of power, trans-pacific and trans-atlantic trade treaties - it brings economic and market stability. At the expense of your personal freedoms and often, your economic well-being. A lot of money will be made, yes, too bad most of it will go to the top 1%.

The US political farce this year is a prime example of that - the Republican base finally got fed up, the Democratic base finally got fed up. The UK also finally got fed up.

The Elites and Globalists ultimately have a single message that they keep repeating - Globalization is good, immigration is good, if you disagree - you're a xenophobic racist. Oh, you're a blue-collar worker and globalization and immigration actually end up destroying your town's economy - too bad, maybe you should have been a banker or software engineer or bio-med researcher! How silly of you to not be one of those three things!

So yes, the GDP keeps growing, economists are happy, but you're not seeing any of the benefits. Housing is getting more and more expensive and your salary is stagnating and all the Elites keep telling you is that this in your best interest, and is, in fact, the only way to move forward. And if you disagree - well, aren't you a silly little backwards out-of-touch country bumpkin?

We haven't even seen the worst of it yet. Automation and smarter AI will keep removing jobs at a break-neck pace, population migration will keep destabilizing countries and what is the end-game to fewer and fewer good jobs and more and more people? Well, we're looking at the results already. Nobody has a back-up plan either.

-Convention machinations to get someone elected are certainly nothing new. And a statement like "The public needed Russia" to shine a light on these machinations, in the context of this being an example of a bad direction, implies... that previously, these machinations came to light on their own?

-Similarly, with respect to the unpopularity of the EU, it's the unpopularity that's new, not the EU. And I think it's hard to say if Euroskepticism over the past 5-6 years is due to the Treaty of Lisbon more than broader economic uncertainty. Is the EU gaining power, or do people just like it less?

I don't want to have too Whiggish a conception of history, but I think there's a big difference between "The world isn't as democratic as it should be" and "The world is getting less democratic," and I keep finding it hard to find evidence for the latter.

General elections are public elections in which anybody who meets certain requirements and is willing to invest the effort can run. As a public election any voter can vote for any candidate. If the candidate has been nominated by a political party, that party will be indicated on the ballot (and most Americans simply vote or the candidate nominated by their party of choice).

Primary elections are basically a private affair undertaken by a political party in order to choose a candidate who they will nominate for a general election. Primaries are facilitated by the public voting system and tend to be influenced by lots of state laws, but most of the specific rules governing a primary are left to the political party (and sometimes delegated to that party's state level organizations).

So parties get to make all kinds of rules about their primaries. In many states (it is subject to state law) parties limit participation in their primary to their members, or more often they disallow members of other parties (but allow someone who hasn't declared a party affiliation). The theory seems to be that this makes it more difficult for one party to ask their members to vote in another party's primary, in an attempt to nominate a candidate who wouldn't be viable in the general election.

Now, what do you do with that? Britain could have required some level of majority before making that change (60-40? 67-33? 75-25?), but they didn't. On the other hand, they could have made it a binding referendum, and if I understand correctly, they didn't do that, either.

But one of the big reasons people wanted to leave "the unpopular and undemocratic European Union" (as wjnc said), was that when people voted "the wrong way" (as determined by Brussels), that vote got ignored. If this vote gets ignored/sidelined/not implemented somehow, for the 52%, that's going to be pouring gasoline on a fire.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/us/politics/spy-agency-...?

Poorly-trained is a problem. But when I go to vote (I'm in the US), I see the polling place guarded by little old ladies. It always amazes me a little bit. It's such a nice contrast to what I see in the news, where some countries have to guard their polling places with soldiers.

FYI, the Sony hack was very likely not committed by an insider (https://www.operationblockbuster.com/wp-content/uploads/2016...). DISCLAIMER: I worked with the team who did operation blockbuster.

Motive is less clear. In reality, they probably hacked the DNC because everybody hacks everybody; that's the reality of modern cyberespionage. America hacks the Russian political parties, they hack us back. But this time someone screwed up and they got caught, so now we need a cover story.

The coverstory of trying to manipulate the election is basically convenient for all involved. It is far fetched enough to sound unbelievable, so it provides diplomatic cover. It also provides cover for why there's no similar story at the RNC, which is better than admitting either the Russians couldn't do it, or they could and they got away with that one. It provides cover to Clinton who can now claim the Russians want to elect Trump so please focus on that instead of anything to do with email, and it provides cover to Trump who would like to keep the word email in the news. This is the story that all our characters are happy to go with.

But the Russians being the perpetrators? That part is definitely true. There is way too much evidence over way too many years. The DNC did not create a Russian intelligence organization in 2007 in order to cover up their email leak in this election.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofacy_Group

[1] http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/36195/cyber-crime/cozydu...

It is a scientifically verified truth that we are puny monkeys playing at God. The problem with leaving democracy to small groups is when the small group’s decisions affect the entire world. For example: San Francisco neighborhood associations’ affect on the housing market and technological development.

Another example: The “commoner” reaction to oil prices going back down, first after the OPEC embargo, and now during this weird fracking + Saudi thing. The “elite” Elon Musk is still going ahead with trying to get us off fossil fuels, but the commoner keeps trying to use more.

Learning enough to have an informed position makes you an elite. One problem is there is so little connection between being a political elite and being a smart, benevolent elite. There’s a reason why Obama is seen by Republicans as condescending and dictatorial.

> Oh, you're a blue-collar worker and globalization and immigration actually end up destroying your town's economy - too bad, maybe you should have been a banker or software engineer or bio-med researcher!

Why should you “be” a blue-collar worker, banker, software engineer, or any other job description? You are a human, and you can learn and do anything (modulo actual physical limitations). Lifelong learning is the goal, and research and personal experience suggest that lifelong learning actually gives you better quality of life than the alternatives.

But the US education system is horrible at that. It is shaping and limiting people’s options from the time that they enter elementary school, and are immediately sorted into, oh, you’re bad at math and good at reading, or you’re bad at reading and good at sports.

By and large, globalization has been good. We have more access to stuff and communications than any society in the history of the world. Past performance does not guarantee future results; we are still monkeys playing at God, so globalization can cause problems. When the US is exporting our restrictions on freedoms, for example.

I don't find them particularly reliable. Their heads perjured themselves in front of Congress not long ago, let's not forget.

As it is, the only purpose the delegates have is to fool people into believing in the result.

Also, I wonder how can the Democratic party can still be credible in denouncing Republicans efforts to suppress voters the right to vote when employing the exact same tactics during the primaries.

All that can be truthfully said is that N people wanted to stay, and N + Y wanted to leave, where Y is a small number. One of the negative sides of democracy - sometimes more people wind up disappointed than others, but the only thing that matters at the end of the day is 50% plus one person.

Quoting from page 8:

1) Exclusive use of hand-counted paper ballots in all future US elections.

2) Automatic voter registration with same-day party affiliation switching as a mandatory condition for all elections that are publicly funded.

3) Restoration of voting rights legislation which would ensure adequate access to polling sites.

A political party is free to change the rules for nominating candidates however and whenever it chooses. It is free to nullify the decision of those voting in a particular primary. A political party is free to nominate whomever it chooses [and almost certainly multiple candidates for the same office it wishes should it choose].

Ultimately the party, not a judge, chooses whose vote matters and whose doesn't. Placing the imprimatur of the state upon a political party's process doesn't change that or make the process of candidate nomination little 'd' democratic. The people within a political party charged with making the rules for candidate selection are not elected or selected little 'd' democratically. The process of nominating candidates is not little 'd' democratic in any meaningful sense.

You're not the only one; attacking the messenger rather than refuting the message seems to be a common tactic among career politicians.

I looked up one of the referenced incidents -- the botched poll in Arizona -- and based on other articles (see: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/31/ar...) it's hard to tell from a bird's eye perspective whether even that was "rigged".. or whether it was mere "incompetence".

I know FiveThirtyEight, referenced several times in the paper, (http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-system-isnt-rigged-a...) lean against the "rigged" argument, which is where I stand from a big picture perspective. Political shenanigans always happen, but regardless of this, demographics explain the result of the Democratic primary more than anything else. (That being said, in my opinion, the same demographics should frankly tell the Democratic Party to handle the Sanders supporters much better than they have been so far.)

This is something we should take away from them. The outcomes of private party activities shouldn't have any impact on the names that appear on ballots. They can maybe mark the names they choose to endorse as an organization, but we should throw away the system where the parties are directly involved in putting names on the ballot (of course they'd be indirectly involved, as an organized group is, uh, organized and thus more ready to act together, so would have an easy time dealing with ballot petitions).

It's as though the comment is trying to prevent overracting, however weigh it against the threat of underreacting. The harm in taking these allegations too seriously (false positive) is doing research and finding out the statistics are invalid (extra research time). The harm in taking these allegations not-seriously-enough (false negative) is mass-scale election fraud.

Given how hard it is for such allegations to even be considered at all in our social climate (even when we all know they're much more technically feasible than people would like to admit) I think a defusing this article detracts from pursuit of truth in exchange for peace of mind.

I haven't read the entire document yet but have sampled a couple of parts. The exit polls section, by the way, is irresponsibly flawed.

It's well-known that the primary purpose of exit polls in the US is not to audit elections. It's not even to project winners. It's to update demographic models. It's well-known that using the vote count to update an exit poll's model is normal and expected practice, and not evidence of conspiracy. Yes, there have been cases where exit poll divergence has been used as evidence to point out likely fraud. But that only happens when the divergence reaches a certain level, and - this is more key - this determination is made by the exit poll organizations themselves.

Here, in order to believe that exit polling shows evidence of fraud, you'd have to not only believe that the exit poll divergence does not have simpler, alternative explanations, and that the level of divergence goes beyond a reasonable range, but that our exit poll organization - a non-partisan coalition of several different independent news organizations - was aware of it and unanimously chose to suppress the information. This is tinfoil hat territory.

I call it irresponsible because the point of view advanced in this report is willfully ignorant of how exit polls even work.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/04/22/ho...

Democracy at its best does not need any systems or hierarchies or even parties. It needs people, all equal, to all vote, and to all be counted. That's it.

I for one am all for mandatory voting, and a mandatory voting national holiday. Those who don't want to vote can vote "null" in protest. And they will feel their voice was heard because it will be. That would be a true democracy and a holiday America would be proud of.

There is zero fair play at that level of politics, and if you have been coddled on your path to that chair in any way, including expectations of the orderly and fair appraisal of the absolute merits of your platform, you are unprepared.

I'm saying that Clinton, with all her party machinations, is proving that she understands and has controls over real levers of power, which in turn, suggests she is capable of operating at the level required for that position.

Sanders came in expecting a fair fight, and that's completely unrealistic, naive, little league politics. If you can't survive your party's nominating process, whatever that is, you are a light snack for the players at that level.

I think the barriers to entry should likely remain high, but we need an overhaul of the voting system itself to break the two-party system, which itself is just a side-effect of the mechanics of our voting process, not anything mandated.

If I remember correctly, early on in the country's history the founders noticed that the mechanics of voting were trending towards a limited two-party system, and that consternated them. Most every (if not actually every) democracy established after the USA has a voting style and representative bodies that allows more parties to coexist, or creative destruction within the set of active parties to thrive.

There are two senses of "expect", one about factual expectations (what you think will happen) and one about moral expectations (what you think should happen). There is plenty of efforts from Sanders efforts to impose accountability from very early on for variously ways the DNC seemed to be putting its finger on the scale that Sanders "expected" a fair fight in the second sense, and was prepared to fight to make the fight as fair as possible.

There's zero evidence I can see that Sanders "expected" a fair fight in the first sense, which is what you seem to be suggesting.

Where as now we are starting to see reports like this be taken seriously because there is a background expectation that primaries are conducted fairly. There is certainly acknowledgement that the current system isn't entirely fair. The change is that an strong desire for fairness now exists where previously it did not.

I'd rather have some system of arbitrarily limiting the number of names on the ballot than a system that privileges parties. For instance, for statewide elections you could choose the 5 (or 10!) names that had satisfied the ballot requirements in the most voting districts (so it doesn't matter that Uncle Larry likes to "run" for state senate in his home county, he doesn't kick someone with a better/actual shot at winning off).

If an athlete is caught doping, do we question whether they would have won anyway?

The criticisms of hypocrisy are fair, but only go so far. If they violated rules, they were rules of their own making, and not rights granted by the Constitution. Voting for a party nominee is a privilege, and if the party chose to limit the voting pool to party officials only, they could do so without violating anyone's rights. Bernie is free to run as an independent, and his supporters are free to vote for him. If the DNC somehow interfered with that, they would be doing what Republicans are accused of doing with the Voter ID laws.

in for nearly $1m

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/05/clinton-foundati...

https://collegetimes.co/larry-lessig-american-democracy/

Everyone should support adequate access to polling sites, but also understand that there is a level of free access that has in the past allowed and encouraged fraud. I think no reasonable person could disagree that showing an ID is a reasonable requirement for voting.

> In our recent election we had two choices for PM from the major parties, chosen by the parties themselves.

This is what the U.S. has as well. The Democratic "primary" is a private process that is not required by the Constitution or federal law. It is set up and run by private citizens for the benefit of private citizens. It is how the Democratic party chooses its candidate, and it works however the Democratic party says it should work.

Participating in a primary is not like participating in a general election. There is no federal right to be considered for the Democratic candidate for president. There is no federal law that says the Democratic National Committee staff has to provide equitable treatment to any particular candidate or campaign. There is not even a federal requirement that a citizen be permitted to cast a vote at all in a primary.

I am hopeful that one of the results of all this hysteria and lawsuits right now is that the courts will help make that clear to people.

-----------

Based on this work, Election Justice USA has established an upper estimate of 184 pledged delegates lost by Senator Bernie Sanders as a consequence of specific irregularities and instances of fraud. Adding these delegates to Senator Sanders’ pledged delegate total and subtracting the same number from Hillary Clinton’s total would more than erase the 359 pledged delegate gap between the two candidates. EJUSA established the upper estimate through exit polling data, statistical analysis by precinct size, and attention to the details of Democratic proportional awarding of national delegates. Even small changes in vote shares in critical states like Massachusetts and New York could have substantially changed the media narrative surrounding the primaries in ways that would likely have had far reaching consequences for Senator Sanders’ campaign.

The standard is that if the prosecution intentionally "cheats" and obtains a conviction through unconstitutional means, the conviction cannot be appealed unless it can be shown that there was a "reasonable probability" that the verdict would have been different without the violation of rights. Worse, in our adversarial system, prosecutors are essentially obligated to argue that any misconduct had no effect. One might even conclude that they are "obligated to cheat".

Ken White, a former prosecutor and legal blogger at Popehat has an excellent explanation of this in his recent piece "Confessions of an Ex-Prosecutor". I'm tempted to just quote entire sections from it, but perhaps better just to link to it. If pressed for time, start with the section "Prosecutors Are Duty-Bound to Argue That Rights Don't Matter": http://reason.com/archives/2016/06/23/confessions-of-an-ex-p...

So, while your point is excellent, one might ask whether our voting system should be more like an athletic contest, or a legal proceeding? And if the answer is "like an athletic contest", what does that say about our legal system?

That's like saying, "Lying is only a crime when you're under oath. Ergo, the party leaders are free to lie all they want and no harm, no foul."

So say they throw out 5% of the results or give a +/- rate you can measure to the final stats and use that to determine whether or not it was significant enough to warrant a recount or a new measurement. If not then it's probably not worth the time as you can assume the majority party will be satisfied with winning and the losing party would not benefit from a recount.

Additionally, the bar would have to be extremely high that the likelyhood it coulld affect the outcome of the results given the extremely high cost involved in doing the data collection or analysis over again.

So, basically, the OP made a fair point.

Whether or not society should be okay with the level of irregularity and fraud is another question. Even if it didn't ultimately affect the results, that doesn't change the morality or questions of legal responsibility of those who manipulated the results.

Keep in mind that what you're seeing in this article is a relatively small and independent part of "the system".

[0]https://twitter.com/Elect_Justice/status/758376021674561536

At this time, I'm still unable to reach their site.

It turns out that satisfying the ballot requirements is already a challenge requiring organization, and that organization is called a political party.

[0] http://www.fec.gov/data/CandidateSummary.do

That's one possible harm, but I think it's also possible that people will take the allegations too seriously and withdraw from the political process entirely. One of the paradoxes of modern political life is that the elections that get the most attention aren't necessarily the ones with the greatest impact on our day-to-day lives. If you don't show up to the polls in November because {Clinton,Trump,Satan} will win anyways because of the rigged system, then you won't vote for mayor, school board, and local bond measures that can much more directly affect the policing policies in your town, the education your kids get, and the transportation infrastructure to get to your places of work or leisure.

I also don't like that a party could literally pick a name out of hat to designate their presidential candidate. Of course it would be terrible for a party itself to do that, but the system is setup so that name would end up on an awful lot of ballots.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/22/republican_it_special...

b) What if some monkeys just want to play with bananas? Why should some monkey decide that "lifelong learning" is better for them?

Whenever people talk about alternative voting systems, the consensus seems to be that it would be impossible to implement in the US. But why? What drives this obsession with choosing between two evils rather than choosing among several, where one's own views might stand a better chance?

Ok here is some reasonable disagreement

Voter impersonation is a very rare type of fraud [0] and ID laws tend to make it hard for some but not all voters to vote [1] meaning they don't prevent fraud, they just prevent democrat votes.

0. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/08/06/a-com... 1. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/measurin...

All the adults in my family felt the fix was in for Clinton since 2008, as we assumed that she made a deal with the DNC regarding Obama's candidacy. If he lost, she would go ahead in 2012, and if he won, she'd go in 2016. So now it's 2016. I presume that the Clintons and the DNC have mutually-assured destruction levels of dirt on each other by now, so they must honor their deal. We never had any expectation whatsoever that any other candidate would get a fair shake. Nothing that has occurred since 2008 obviously contradicts the hypothesis. Secretary of state is #5 in the line of emergency presidential succession, and a perfect resume-builder for someone who didn't snag an elected office during the previous cycle.

We suspected that O'Malley was offered something in exchange for being Clinton's foil through primary season, and that he was able to bow out early, because former independent Sanders stepped in to fill his role as the token opposition, blissfully unaware as a party outsider that the fix was already in.

I am even now unconvinced that D. Trump was not a secret co-conspirator in the President Hillary Clinton plan. I'm not sure anyone expected the R party to actually select him, either.

The public has a vested interest in having a ballot present only those candidates who can demonstrate a minimum-level of popular support. Otherwise why have a qualification process at all -- we can give voters phonebooks to take with them into the booth, and they can find the name of whichever citizen they feel should be elected.

But with regard to your question, the obvious explanation is that the voting method itself acts as a game theory attractor for a certain number of "viable" candidates, until a Nash equilibrium is reached. First-past-the-post thus eventually results in an entrenched two-party system.

This alone is ample reason for those two parties to resist any change to the voting method. Anything else might undermine their duopoly.

However, I don't think this is a sufficient argument to motivate people who would refuse to vote because of the state of the presidential election. I think they would feel that local educational or policing policies are insignificant in comparison to the big-picture changes they now have no say in because their favored candidate was eliminated by corrupt party and media practices. They might still feel that they will be more affected by the year-to-year impact of foreign policy and trade policy than the day-to-day impact of a .1% chance increase of getting a bogus traffic ticket.

Before we are too quick to call on the law to support our side, consider what happens when that same law is used against us by our opponents. Right now you may want DNC leaders in jail, but I think it would set a terrible precedent for private political activities to result in imprisonment, regardless of our distaste for them. Again, the situation is very different when peoples' Constitutional voting rights are denied (eg, voting in a real election). Then by all means, legal action should be taken.

- non-partisan redistricting

- instant runoff voting

- automatic voter registration

So let me bring up some exhaustively prepared articles from the past. A lot of these are from the late 2000s when the "voter ID" issue was in play, but I do not think the electoral landscape has changed that much since then.

A report on voter fraud in 2007 from the Brennan Center concluded a very low rate of voter fraud in 2004. http://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/The%...

News21 (part of the Carnegie Knight media initiative) created a database of voter fraud. They found little. http://votingrights.news21.com/article/election-fraud/

We have this Washington Post reporter who tracked voter fraud, and found little. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/08/06/a-com...

And... another paper on how "voter fraud is in the eye of the beholder." (Harvard Law Review) http://www.harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/anso...

So... that's a lot of data (I could link many more reports from this era) that indicates that, frankly, voter fraud from any angle really hasn't been a big issue before (and that any perception may be due to political bias, perhaps). I do believe there's plenty of inefficiencies regarding the American electoral process, and that might be right ("inaccurate, costly, and inefficient" as the Pew Center on the States alleged in 2012, that I buy -- http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_as...). But there's a difference between incompetence and awful systems, and outright fraud.

I must acknowledge that this isn't the only paper alleging fraud in the 2016 primaries (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6mLpCEIGEYGYl9RZWFRcmpsZk0...). I will note however that, for this one, Snopes was skeptical in that the numbers had not been peer reviewed by independent parties (http://www.snopes.com/stanford-study-proves-election-fraud-t...) and note counter-viewpoints ala Joshua Holland of The Nation (who does not think much of "exit poll conspiracies": https://www.thenation.com/article/reminder-exit-poll-conspir...)

This is why I'm very cautious. Bias is huge in politics; it may be exhaustively prepared, but if they are using bunk statistics, it's not worth much.

• There were emails in the DNC leaks that hinted at a suspiciously cozy relationship between the party and media organizations.

• During the DNC primary process, media reports often included superdelegates in Hillary's delegate count, making Bernie's case seem impossible. Media often failed to even mention the existence of Bernie Sanders in many cases, or calling him "unelectable" even while he was polling ahead of Hillary or Trump.

• In prior elections, some news channels may have gone as far as not even listing a second-place candidate they don't like in poll numbers.

• Voters can be influenced by a belief that their vote will be wasted by voting for someone who is not a "sure thing".

• Therefore, (assuming) the media manipulation or incompetence, DNC bias in favor of Hillary, and vote manipulation to give the impression of momentum to Hillary, even an insufficient number of delegates won by "cheating" could have swayed the election by second-order effects.

This deserves more attention. I encourage anybody with enough spare time to work a poll at least once (they typically pay you and cover commute costs).

Usually the people training volunteers were never properly trained themselves and, in my experience, responsibilities are delegated emphasizing fairness over merit.

The last poll I worked at had volunteers check in voters using some clunky software on an old laptop. It quickly became clear that none of the volunteers used (or perhaps even owned) a computer and, as a result, check-in was a disaster. I offered to take over or re-train them on how to use the software, but no -- it was my turn to hand out "I Voted!" stickers and I had to wait my turn to work the check-in station.

Indeed, and I like this set of visualizations to demonstrate that: http://zesty.ca/voting/sim

This alone is ample reason for those two parties to resist any change to the voting method. Anything else might undermine their duopoly.

So we know why the major parties would oppose voting system change. Is there something beyond the parties' word that keeps non-partisan members of the public from wanting to change voting systems?

So the political parties have become these weird, permanent, pseudo-governmental entities that no longer have consistent identities of their own, but are basically available for capture every 4 years.

That's how you get the "Republican Party platform" doing a full reversal on trade policy, international policy, health care, and a dozen other issues between 2012 and now.

The "Republican Party" today is just a shell--a collection of structural advantages that the Trump folks have won the the right to put on like a costume. Same with the Democratic party--Sanders just failed to win the costume.

What we need, is to regularly reset the requirements for political organizations, so that it's just as easy for new candidates to be supported by new organizations, as old parties.

In some states (like California) write-in candidates also have to register and qualify, and writing in a non-qualified write-in candidate is for all purposes (except the workload for vote counters) identical to blank ballot -- even if through some fluke of coordinate protest they received a majority of cast ballots, it would just show up in the counts as a very low number of valid ballots cast.

Members of the public who want voting system change end up with members of the parties proposing superficial changes to relieve that demand that pose no or minimal challenge to the partisan duopoly, like nonpartisan redistricting (adopted in several states), California's top-two primary system, term limits (adopted in lots of states), tweaks to election scheduling, ballot access rules, etc.

There is nothing that can be placed in between you and your voice that will add to what you will say. No system, no bureaucracy, no process, no delegate, nothing. This is a fundamental virtue of communication. Imagine if anything stood between you and the submit button you used to respond? Even if you had to tell someone first who then had to tell me, the message could be tainted. A man-in-the-middle is inherently insecure, whether it's actually a man or anything else. Just my keyboard will give me typos.

You cannot get elected here as a third-party or independent. Period. If you had a notion to buy your way in, it would be cheaper to pay off the second-place major party to run you as their candidate than to run in your own right. The only place you will ever see a third party on the ballots here is the line for presidential electors.

And for a variety of reasons, in a manner similar to Comcast and Time Warner, the two major parties often choose to not compete in certain areas, to the ultimate detriment of the residents. I write in because when I see only one name on the ballot, that is a mockery of democracy.

If the vote counters hate me, that is exactly what I want. I hate how they support a system that pretends to be democratic.

It's okay to take back something you said in error in HN, you don't always have to double-down.

It's unfeasible to educate all 150M+ voters to the level where we can be confident their opinion on the question is informed. Absent that, their votes will only measure how the question feels with respect to gut-instinct and common "wisdom". Moreover, it would be a waste of time to have 300M (we need to teach the children too) people all be educated on the minutiae of every public policy. The field of public policy is an actual discipline precisely because it is something that people need to specialize in.

Given questions like,

- what range of broadcasting frequencies should be set aside for public use?

- what should the maximum allowable individual gross income be before one should be required to pay AMT if it exceeds AGI; what about jointly-filing couples?

- what should the agricultural subsidy be for soy and grain farmers?

how do you think the average person is supposed to decide these things?

What is your evidence that they choose not to compete? Competing costs almost nothing if someone wants the job and enough people fill out single party ballots that they'd have a good chance.

I'm disappointed that you choose your protest method to be inconveniencing local volunteers in a manner that is even less likely to achieve results than something you compare to holding back the tide.

Theoretically third-party candidates could gain exposure through the General Election debate however, the Commission on Presidential Debates which organize the debate makes it very difficult for a third-party candidate to be eligible to the debate. Indeed candidates need "a level of support of at least 15 percent of the national electorate as determined by five selected national public opinion polling organizations" as defined by the CPD.

You may then wonder who is the CPD? The CPD is a PRIVATE organization financed with PRIVATE money. They claim to be nonpartisan even though it is governed by former chairmen of the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee. No wonder why they don't want to open the door to third-party candidates...

Now a party may still decide to run its internal elections like a banana republic but in that case, this party should certainly not be named the Democratic party...

On one hand, we have an electronic vote count which can't be verified and on the other, we have raw exit polls data that are kept secret. What kind of Democracy is that??? Isn't transparency one of the most fundamental principal in a Democracy?

The American election process isn't transparent at all... How can we claim our elections to be democratic?

If it's not clear, I'm not saying that the paper is wrong per se.

There are ongoing lawsuits relating to this where many people of varied interests are going to be pouring over this, and other data, way more than I can at the moment.

If the results of the lawsuits validate this paper, then this paper is important.

But it's also possible that the lawsuits will not be successful.

Historically most claims of voter fraud have been wildly exaggerated, which is why I bring up the past. Including the fact that bias unfortunately colored many fraud claims in the past.

Maybe it's different this time. Maybe not. We'll see.

To run for a county office, such as Sheriff, Coroner, Treasurer, Commissioner/Constable, or School Board, as an independent, I would need 5000 verified signatures. To list a party affiliation, I would need about 36000. Based on the experience of the Libertarian Party in 2015, I might face a 60% rejection rate for signatures, meaning I would need to collect 12500, costing roughly $25000.

To keep my party listed as a "qualified party" for the next election, it would need 20% (!) of the votes cast in a statewide race.

The major parties do not need to collect that many signatures, which gives an innate funding advantage for campaigning.

And you might expect that the other major party might not run an opposition candidate for Sheriff in a county where the incumbents are heavily favored every election, but how about allowing the candidate for U.S. Senate to run unopposed? [0] What about three of the seven districts for House of Representatives? [1]

I don't tilt at windmills.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_... : "An independent candidate would have been able to challenge Sessions if at least 44,828 signatures had been submitted by June 3, 2014."

[1] https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_House_of_Representativ... : Districts 4 and 7 were completely unopposed; district 5 had only an independent challenger.

Of course, they don't have to provide equitable treatment to candidates in other ways.

Waxing political I wonder if Trump will be able to build an infrastructure to hack/disenfranchise as many people as Clinton will since he's not as firmly inserted into the political machine. In other words elections of the future won't be settled by how many votes a candidate wins but by how many votes a candidate steals. Gives a whole new meaning to "Candidate A has locked in the [insert demographic here] vote."

1) Exclusive use of hand-counted paper ballots in all future US elections.

2) Automatic voter registration, with same-day party affiliation switching as a mandatory condition for all elections that are publicly funded.

3) Restoration of voting rights legislation which would ensure adequate access to polling sites.

So it's cool: no jail time for anybody, just better preventative measures.

Even if most of the voters give their best effort to think this through, for a lot of them that wasn't much, other than what UKIP barfed into the air and into their minds. Now a lot of them are having second thoughts.

You're saying not all votes are equal, and that idiots shouldn't get to vote. This violates a basic tenet of democracy. The next step would be to not allow them to speak, because they will contaminate the minds of our good voters. Or better yet, kill them. That's censorship, and genocide, and precisely how they occur even today.

The moment we decide we need to determine who is good enough, we start comparing people. This opens the floodgates of racism, sexism, ageism, elitism, and every -ism under the stars. Democrats will discriminate republicans, and Bloods will discriminate Crips. You of course are free to argue you are none of these things, but now you're saying you're above these people, and so you've just joined the discrimination.

Who is to judge anyone but ourselves?

If democracy is about equal voice, then all these comparisons between people become moot. This is how democracy transcends what any of us think of each other, and that's the beauty of it. And that's why it's better than anything else we've come up with so far.

Granted all of our votes are equal, you are free to attempt to educate the 150M+ voter pool if you so desire. This is what you are free to do, and encouraged to do. Go out and solve the problems you envision, so long as you don't alter our democracy as part of your solution.

That is why the only issue in implementing a true democracy is with the logistics of accounting for our voices. And anything that gets in the way, be it requiring IDs, or delegates, or electoral votes, or districts... all become hindrances to democracy. But the moment anyone tries to manipulate votes, these are the devices they have. This is how they get in between us and our vote. And that is why there is so much of it. It works! People, like you mind you, who have ideas about "how" votes should be counted decide to muck with democracy, and to their credit, they have been successful.

Setting all this aside, what you are advocating is to have a more educated voter pool, which doesn't seem like a bad idea. Backing votes with more brainpower clearly will dictate decisions to be smarter. You will be able to back this statement with evidence, because it is true.

The problem is not with the statement or the desire to design a better democracy. The problem is with everything else. And with all things considered, "equal voice + freedom of speech - violence" still seems like the best equation.

Speak not to change the system but to change people's minds. This already works in America. I can't even name where it works anywhere else. The system is still broken, but only because we don't need 99% of it (and by system I mean voting, not government).

How about if you respond to what the GP actually said instead of making up things that they didn't say? It seems to me that what they actually said is that "representative democracy works better for the real people in the real world -- a large percentage of whose time, on average, is and, for maximum personal and social benefit must be, spent on non-public-policy pursuits -- than direct democracy in which every public policy question was directly submitted to the citizenry.

There may be good counterarguments against what was actually said, but the strawman you set up, and the arguments you deploy against that strawman, are not among them.

What is the state or federal government interest in how a private organization chooses to endorse a slate of candidates? Will we see lawsuits and government regulations over how the Sierra Club or NRA choose to endorse candidates? Will we see state officials stepping in to run or monitor caucuses or conventions if the state party decides to do that instead of a primary?

Just because a party primary has the same mechanics as a general election, that doesn't necessarily mean it has the same legal status--or that it should. In fact it's arguable that spending state resources to help a group of private citizens decide who to endorse is an example of straight-up corruption and waste of taxpayer money.

I stick to the topic which is also the topic of the article and someone else intrudes and accuses me of a straw man. SMH.