Apparently a bunch of states (23?) are using a software system called Interstate Crosscheck to look for "double voters".
> Election officials in more than two dozen states have compiled lists of citizens whom they allege could be registered in more than one state – thus potentially able to cast multiple ballots – and eligible to be purged from the voter rolls.
The problem is that it often only uses a persons name as a singular data point. So if a person votes with the same first/last name as another person in another state, it's possible that vote could be wiped out. It was even matching names even though there were differences in middle names or had Jr/Sr at the end.
The journalist, Greg Palast, who investigated this back in 2014 has been doing radio circuits again recently saying that it's still being used in a bunch of states. Not sure about the validity of this since there hasn't been much reporting elsewhere on this. He seems to be the only one talking about it. And googling 'Interstate Crosscheck' only brings up his articles and democrat superpac websites.
No, it is not possible for your vote to be "wiped out." If you cast a ballot it will be counted. It's frankly a bit dangerous to imply otherwise.
As it says in the bit of article you quoted, states can use these systems to find people who are "eligible to be purged from the rolls." This is bad. Especially when it disproportionately affects certain populations of people.
But if you show up on election day and you've been purged from the rolls, election officials are required by law to provide you with a provisional ballot.
Interesting. I'm registered in 3 states (I always kinda assumed registering in a new state unregistered you in another) and my wife is registered in 2. I wonder if my name is on that list. Damn even the criteria they use doesn't technically have to be unique; it's possible to have the same name, DOB and last 4 digits of a SSN (though that's likely incredibly rare but still the possibility is theoretically there).
I feel as if our entire election and voting process needs a `re-write`.
> So if a person votes with the same first/last name as another person in another state, it's possible that vote could be wiped out. It was even matching names even though there were differences in middle names or had Jr/Sr at the end.
Funny how this exact same problem was a non-issue for the left when it came to "No-fly, No-Buy."
It's pretty but what is this really telling us? There's a 126% increase in searchers for "Voter intimidation" in Hoback, Wyoming. OK, so does that mean that someone's being intimidated? Planning to intimidate? Curious about the news? Does a "126% increase" mean there were 7 searches today instead of just 4?
They are tracking what search terms people are using to search from Google. These search terms have been grouped under few headings, like "voter intimidation". Looks like they are not telling what search terms are actually used. Maybe this is to prevent people from gaming the system.
"[...] To ensure the map includes the most relevant trends, we compiled a list of ways English and Spanish-speaking voters might indicate voting issues through their search queries on Election Day, by looking at historical data from 2012 Election, Super Tuesday 2016, and early voting 2016. We combined hundreds of the most relevant search terms around the following voting issues [...]"
Good points, I thought the same, but they actually address that if you click the logo (though it's just a possible explanation of how that data point might be explained):
"FEARS OF VOTER INTIMIDATION KEEPING PEOPLE FROM THE POLLS
We’ve had a lot of reports of people worried about going to the polls because of threats of voter intimidation. While the fears are real — and we certainly expect to see one-off issues of attempts at intimidating voters (like the Trump supporters will bull horns in West Palm Beach) — there is no evidence to suggest that an organized campaign to intimidate voters is underway. "
The most value I see here is the map presents you way to observe state-by-state disparities about the searches that MAY reflect some state-level, systemic disenfranchisement due to voting laws, disorganization, negligence and like. For example, it's notable that NC has a high concentration of searches for "Inactive Voter Status" compared to a much more populated state like Texas.
Of course, this could just mean people in NC are more curious about "Inactive Voter Status" than the rest of the country... but I would reserve that possibility for search terms like "Voter Fraud" that are a more politicized.
I just had to vote "provisional" myself (Palm Beach County).
I have a feeling there is going to be a lot of fraud reports against the Florida Board of Elections. We registered almost 2 weeks before our Oct 11 deadline, yet neither my wife nor I were in their system - we received no mail or anything from the BoE.
My vote, I'm absolutely certain now, will be thrown in the trash. Even if it isn't, the election will be over by the time it's "counted".
Think I'm simply spreading FUD? Take a look at the 2004 Florida general election... this state's election board is wholly corrupted.
I know it sucks but it's good that you at least voted provisionally. If you get any kind of receipt, etc, it can help if there's class actions following the election. Given the state of this election... there very well might be.
"Wholly corrupted" would mean 110% voted for the selected politician. "Wholly corrupted" would imply a completely bought and sold election board. This is absolutely not the case, and goes to feed apathy, violence, and adverse voting outcomes (Mussolini, Mugabe, etc.). Note that I am not implying any of the political candidates this year meet this qualification.
"Polling stations are engineered to underserve minorities", "voters are wrongfully being purged from the rolls", "districts are drawn for the advantage of a political party" are truthful statements that are more meaningful.
Same thing happened to me in Ohio. I had moved nearly two months ago and changed my voting registration almost immediately. Still had my old address listed.
Hopefully, theres nothing that goes wrong with the provisional votes.
A 100% increase in searches for "voter intimidation" in my city (Seattle) is interesting. I'd love additional context on who is searching for that (i.e. is it the intimidators or the fearful?)
Nonetheless, this seems like the beginning of an interesting tool. What would it take to do some sort of fuzzy matching on related searches, like broken voting machines for voting machine problems? I suppose you could wait for a related term to breach a threshold and begin tracking it with related terms.
It could also be people who had a /wonderful/ easy voting experience, and heard from some guy who reads HN that 'voter intimidation' was a trending search term, so decided to search and see what the fuss was about...
Given that Washington State is all mail-in, I doubt we're seeing a lot of actual voter intimidation! I'm also in Seattle, and dropped my ballot off at one of three drop-off points. There were some nice people in smocks there who thanked me for voting.
"Rural Right Wing Nuts Challenging Voter Credentials" , "Urban Left Wing Maniacs Handing out Booze for Votes" and "Voting Machines Problems" are staple news stories on Election Day in America.
Just regular people scared by media propaganda. That would be my guess. Exactly like the other items in the list. 'Long lines' doesn't mean people forming long lines are searching for it.
A population density overlay would have been helpful as would a voting trend by state or even by municipality or district to understand if there are any statistically relevant discrepancies. That said, I suspect the point of this tool is to lower the barriers to voting to allow everyone's vote to be collected.
Almost, but my very densely populated state of Massachusetts has barely any trending searches for "provisional ballot", and none in Boston; whereas the swingier state of Ohio awash with trending "Provisional Ballot" searches.
I completely disagree: I think that voting, in person, surrounded by other members of the community, is an important part of our civil religion. Election Day should be a true holiday, dedicated to patriotic and civic commemorations.
In particular, I think that early voting leaves voters liable to act on less information than is necessary. Obviously there must be a cutoff — if a candidate goes insane the day after the election, it's too late — but I think it's preferable for all voters to be acting on the same available information.
Obviously some folks need to be away from home on Election Day, but I think that the vast majority of us should be voting together, with our communities.
I fear that the trend towards early voting will lead to increased partisanship, and that the way we've been running our elections and districting for the past century or so has led to a decreased sense of community and patriotism.
I'm a bit peeved polls didn't open until 9AM in New Rockford ND when the state (and a fair number of farmers) said they would open at 7AM. Wonder what that would be on Google's chart.
Sortof OT: I was also interested in election trends. While Google is focusing on real-time search trends regarding voting, I looked at meme trends leading up to the election. There are interesting trends in the amount of attention different candidate memes received over time. It will be interesting to see whether the attention received by candidates is translated into votes, today.
This is pretty, but it's all statistical outliers; every highlighted spot is a small city where random fluctuations above a low baseline are most likely to generate seemingly-impressive spikes in query volume.
This is cool, but seems to me to be very especially vulnerable to the Observer Effect. Any fluctuation in these search terms that shows up here will cause people to try and find out more by searching for those terms themselves. What may have started out as random noise gets fed through a feedback loop and amplified, while not necessarily being signal.
I saw an increase in searches for voter intimidation near where I live. I immediately went to DuckDuckGo, and "!n voter intimidation". Now I'm part of the problem, apparently :)
I don't see a link to the source code either. This was undoubtedly built on top of many open source projects, but I have no way to view the licenses and copyright notices.
I wish this were normalized by electoral college size, it would go part-way to normalizing by population but also be normalized with respect to impact on outcome.
I love the American elections! The data, the coverage, the websites, the data-driven-campaigning... all of it.
I mean, I'm glad I don't live there and have to choose between these disasters of candidates and see either of them hand over the control of the world to Asia... but I do love the elections as a platform!
Particularly intersting is the 'inactive voter status' band along the cotton belt (a region of African Americans in the southern sates where the voting rights act was recently repealed). Yet no such searches in KS, CO, NE, WY etc.
While we're on the subject of voter intimidation, there has been constant intimidation of Trump supporters throughout this whole campaign[0]. And at the same time, Democrats had a deliberate campaign to incite Trump supporters to violence[1] although this required provoking them by infiltrating their private events, while Trump supporters were harassed and abused on the streets.
Progressives have this insane argument that goes that violence and intimidation against Trump supporters is actually ok and not contrary to our deepest values, because it is done by private citizens and not the government.
[+] [-] dmix|9 years ago|reply
> Election officials in more than two dozen states have compiled lists of citizens whom they allege could be registered in more than one state – thus potentially able to cast multiple ballots – and eligible to be purged from the voter rolls.
The problem is that it often only uses a persons name as a singular data point. So if a person votes with the same first/last name as another person in another state, it's possible that vote could be wiped out. It was even matching names even though there were differences in middle names or had Jr/Sr at the end.
The journalist, Greg Palast, who investigated this back in 2014 has been doing radio circuits again recently saying that it's still being used in a bunch of states. Not sure about the validity of this since there hasn't been much reporting elsewhere on this. He seems to be the only one talking about it. And googling 'Interstate Crosscheck' only brings up his articles and democrat superpac websites.
http://projects.aljazeera.com/2014/double-voters/index.html
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-gops-steal...
[+] [-] eli|9 years ago|reply
As it says in the bit of article you quoted, states can use these systems to find people who are "eligible to be purged from the rolls." This is bad. Especially when it disproportionately affects certain populations of people.
But if you show up on election day and you've been purged from the rolls, election officials are required by law to provide you with a provisional ballot.
[+] [-] BinaryIdiot|9 years ago|reply
I feel as if our entire election and voting process needs a `re-write`.
[+] [-] nickysielicki|9 years ago|reply
Funny how this exact same problem was a non-issue for the left when it came to "No-fly, No-Buy."
[+] [-] tmaly|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NelsonMinar|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nostromo|9 years ago|reply
Near Seattle there are trends reported for "voter intimidation" and "long wait times" and "voting machine problems."
Those trends make no sense for a region that votes by mail.
[+] [-] jpalomaki|9 years ago|reply
"[...] To ensure the map includes the most relevant trends, we compiled a list of ways English and Spanish-speaking voters might indicate voting issues through their search queries on Election Day, by looking at historical data from 2012 Election, Super Tuesday 2016, and early voting 2016. We combined hundreds of the most relevant search terms around the following voting issues [...]"
https://medium.com/google-news-lab/how-google-trends-data-wi...
[+] [-] alistairSH|9 years ago|reply
I would expect most of these searches to increase in frequency on election day, even relative to SuperTuesday or 2012.
[+] [-] listentojohan|9 years ago|reply
We’ve had a lot of reports of people worried about going to the polls because of threats of voter intimidation. While the fears are real — and we certainly expect to see one-off issues of attempts at intimidating voters (like the Trump supporters will bull horns in West Palm Beach) — there is no evidence to suggest that an organized campaign to intimidate voters is underway. "
[1] https://projects.propublica.org/electionland/
[+] [-] fny|9 years ago|reply
Of course, this could just mean people in NC are more curious about "Inactive Voter Status" than the rest of the country... but I would reserve that possibility for search terms like "Voter Fraud" that are a more politicized.
[+] [-] mangeletti|9 years ago|reply
I have a feeling there is going to be a lot of fraud reports against the Florida Board of Elections. We registered almost 2 weeks before our Oct 11 deadline, yet neither my wife nor I were in their system - we received no mail or anything from the BoE.
My vote, I'm absolutely certain now, will be thrown in the trash. Even if it isn't, the election will be over by the time it's "counted".
Think I'm simply spreading FUD? Take a look at the 2004 Florida general election... this state's election board is wholly corrupted.
[+] [-] biot|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] komali2|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] linkregister|9 years ago|reply
"Wholly corrupted" would mean 110% voted for the selected politician. "Wholly corrupted" would imply a completely bought and sold election board. This is absolutely not the case, and goes to feed apathy, violence, and adverse voting outcomes (Mussolini, Mugabe, etc.). Note that I am not implying any of the political candidates this year meet this qualification.
"Polling stations are engineered to underserve minorities", "voters are wrongfully being purged from the rolls", "districts are drawn for the advantage of a political party" are truthful statements that are more meaningful.
[+] [-] hvoiiita|9 years ago|reply
Hopefully, theres nothing that goes wrong with the provisional votes.
[+] [-] jplahn|9 years ago|reply
Nonetheless, this seems like the beginning of an interesting tool. What would it take to do some sort of fuzzy matching on related searches, like broken voting machines for voting machine problems? I suppose you could wait for a related term to breach a threshold and begin tracking it with related terms.
[+] [-] deckiedan|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] girzel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DicksenZuider|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dominotw|9 years ago|reply
Just regular people scared by media propaganda. That would be my guess. Exactly like the other items in the list. 'Long lines' doesn't mean people forming long lines are searching for it.
[+] [-] wiredfool|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ComteDeLaFere|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dimino|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedberg|9 years ago|reply
Basically if it's a heavily populated area that is awake, then the dots are big.
Maybe as the day goes on it will level out to more interesting insights?
[+] [-] partisan|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bjonica|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mastermachetier|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tangue|9 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.wired.com/2015/10/can-learn-epic-failure-google-...
[+] [-] ryanSrich|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeveb|9 years ago|reply
In particular, I think that early voting leaves voters liable to act on less information than is necessary. Obviously there must be a cutoff — if a candidate goes insane the day after the election, it's too late — but I think it's preferable for all voters to be acting on the same available information.
Obviously some folks need to be away from home on Election Day, but I think that the vast majority of us should be voting together, with our communities.
I fear that the trend towards early voting will lead to increased partisanship, and that the way we've been running our elections and districting for the past century or so has led to a decreased sense of community and patriotism.
[+] [-] Munksgaard|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] protomyth|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] idm|9 years ago|reply
Here's the working paper: http://iandennismiller.github.io/election-memes
EDIT: quick link to viz: http://imgur.com/S6nHNLT
[+] [-] nhebb|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gmisra|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timdierks|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anonymoushn|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TallGuyShort|9 years ago|reply
I saw an increase in searches for voter intimidation near where I live. I immediately went to DuckDuckGo, and "!n voter intimidation". Now I'm part of the problem, apparently :)
[+] [-] traskjd|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nthitz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deckar01|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawayReply|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josefresco|9 years ago|reply
https://usaelectionmonitor.ushahidi.io/views/map
Article:
http://qz.com/825442/kenyas-crisis-mapping-startup-ushahidi-...
[+] [-] neals|9 years ago|reply
I mean, I'm glad I don't live there and have to choose between these disasters of candidates and see either of them hand over the control of the world to Asia... but I do love the elections as a platform!
[+] [-] vhost-|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whybroke|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbesto|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] farright|9 years ago|reply
Progressives have this insane argument that goes that violence and intimidation against Trump supporters is actually ok and not contrary to our deepest values, because it is done by private citizens and not the government.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUBpRexwiPg
[1] http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/10/17/exclusive...