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A Report on the Flawed 2016 Democratic Primaries

(drive.google.com)
212 points DamienSF | 5 comments | 27 Jul 16 05:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.003s | source
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tunesmith ◴[27 Jul 16 18:19 UTC] No.12175287[source]▶
Is there convincing evidence in this document that the amount of irregularities were actually sufficient to change the result?

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...

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1. seizethecheese ◴[27 Jul 16 18:43 UTC] No.12175476[source]▶
> Is there convincing evidence in this document that the amount of irregularities were actually sufficient to change the result?

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

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2. nkurz ◴[27 Jul 16 19:31 UTC] No.12175827[source]▶
In athletics, usually not. But perhaps surprisingly, in the American legal system, yes! The relevant question actually is whether "they would have won anyway".

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?

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3. dmix ◴[27 Jul 16 19:33 UTC] No.12175845[source]▶
That's a poor analogy. In statistics you can have an acceptable level of error (called an error rate) where the primary pool of data is still sufficiently accurate enough to be usable.

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.

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4. dak1 ◴[27 Jul 16 20:04 UTC] No.12176083[source]▶
From a layman's perspective, it certainly sounds like the legal system needs to be changed, not replicated.
5. nitrogen ◴[27 Jul 16 20:22 UTC] No.12176200[source]▶
The following comment is rather speculative, but I'm laying out a potential argument to demonstrate that there can be second-order effects beyond the questioned voting districts.

• 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.