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Scheme to cast votes on stolen mail ballots thwarted by Colorado election officials. (coloradosun.com)

submitted 4 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/news

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[–] dhork 238 points 4 weeks ago (6 children)

They go out of their way in the article to not cast any partisan aspirations on the scheme. But it is the same county where Tina Peters used to be the county clerk, and is now in jail after being convicted of election shenanigans for Trump. And it looks like it had the complicity of at least one judge.

Watch this one, folks. The details sadly won't come out until after the election, but when they do I think we will find that Republican talk about election fraud is also projection, like all their other complaints.

[–] [email protected] 76 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

It's so fucking disgusting. The Republicans have 252527171 ways to try to win this, and we have 1.

Kamala needs to be perfect and Trump could walk on stage with nothing but a shit filled diaper, do the Hitler salute and somehow gain in the poles... It's infuriating.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 4 weeks ago (3 children)

Harris and Trump have very different bases.

If Trump went to New York and shot a black person, his base wouldn't care whereas if Harris did, the Democrats would be in an uproar.

However, if Trump went to New York and gave people COVID shots, now his base would be fucking furious.

Both candidates are appealing to their base. It's just the Democratic base is a bunch of sane and rational people.

[–] Red_October 9 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I call bullshit on Trump's base not caring if he just openly shot a black person. They wouldn't ignore that, they'd love it.

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[–] InverseParallax 7 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

And the republican base think the greatest part of America was the confederacy.

Maga indeed.

[–] acosmichippo 4 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I understand the bases. I don't understand all the people who won't vote at all.

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[–] acosmichippo 21 points 4 weeks ago

republicans would NEVER

[–] yesman 17 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

IDK about projection, but if you convince people that a system is corrupt, they're much more likely to cheat.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 weeks ago

A little of column A; a little of column B.

[–] Vorticity 15 points 4 weeks ago (3 children)

You're probably right but I don't really get it. Mesa County is so red that Trump won by 28 points in 2020. What was this person trying to achieve? For that matter, what was Tina Peters was trying to achieve? I just don't understand how either of them could have made a difference when, in 2020, Trump won by over 25K votes out of a total of 91K votes cast and 107K registered voters.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Perhaps they wanted it to be caught, where it wouldn't make a difference if it wasn't, in order to shore up their future claims that more of the same occurred in more competitive districts. As well as undermining faith in the election as a whole.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 weeks ago

That’s actually a very insightful theory.

But if I had to bet on it, I’d still put my money on outright stupidity.

[–] acosmichippo 8 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

the county totals don't matter for president, it is counted statewide.

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[–] dogslayeggs 5 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

There are more things to vote on than just the President. State representation is important.

[–] Vorticity 5 points 4 weeks ago

You're right, it is. In 2020 not a single race in Mesa County was competitive. Likewise, none of the state-wide races were competitive enough to have their results changed even if everyone in Mesa County voted the same way.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 weeks ago

Every accusation is a confession

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago

It is always projection. There have been previous Republican voters fraud cases in the last election(s).

At least it's an easy alert for what problems to look for. If they're declaring "the other guys" are doing something, they're already doing it themselves.

[–] alquicksilver 109 points 4 weeks ago (4 children)

“We don’t know the motive,” she said.

Really? You don't know the motive? I'd give anyone on the internet three guesses, and the first two don't count.

[–] TheTechnician27 38 points 4 weeks ago

They were trying to, uh... outspit god for scrump. No wait, that's not it, uh... emit cod for gump? That doesn't sound right either... OH, I think I get it: they were trying to commit fraud for Trump.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 weeks ago

I would bet the house on the motive and who they voted for.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I mean, it's true that they don't actually know the motive.

You can make a strong educated guess, and you'd probably be right, but until there is a full investigation leading to a conviction, they can't say that for sure.

[–] spankmonkey 15 points 4 weeks ago

The motive was trying to change the outcome of the election. There are zero other possible motives.

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Those three ballots represent 0.003% of the total ballots cast in the county in the last presidential election year.

Or put another way: 25% of the known fraudulent ballots got through.

I hope they catch the perpetrator(s) and inflict maximum justice.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

0% would have gotten through if the judge had done their job.

[–] EmpathicVagrant 4 points 4 weeks ago

appeals responsibility of the job

Am I doing it right, Georgia‽

[–] dhork 11 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

With less than 100k voters in the county, there is a non-zero chance that the margin will be within 3 votes, and now this scheme has given both sides a legitimate excuse to hold up certification if the margin is close. Even if it's not within 3 votes, we know there is shady shit going on.

Now, it does look like this county is heavily Republican. But the State will probably go to Harris, so any delays might endanger the casting of CO's 10 Electoral Votes .

[–] Makeitstop 12 points 4 weeks ago

Technically there's a non-zero chance of the margin being within three votes for any population of voters.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (3 children)

However, three ballots were counted before election officials could pull them from the process because they passed through the signature verification process. Those votes cannot be remedied or removed.

What? So the person whose ballot was stolen now has their vote cast for trump (let's be real there is a 99.99% chance it was a trumper who did this even they are being coy about it) and there is nothing they can do about it? WTF?

[–] [email protected] 26 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

They will likely revamp the process. The problem is, once the ballot is counted, the vote is separated from the voter, so there's no link to who the person was and who they voted for.

It's a process meant for privacy. That someone was able to accurately forge signatures enough to pass verification (which is handled by trained humans) is a bit on the "this was creepy/planned" side, which is likely how the outlier event happened.

America isn't there yet, but cryptographic hashes anonymizing but connecting a vote to a voter, so the vote could be anonymously recalled for an attack like this would likely be the best privacy-preserving process.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

99% of Congress is too old to understand a word you just said... Someday it'll all be zoomers, and then maybe tech will start to help us

[–] VinnyDaCat 4 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Maybe.

Millennials, zoomers and even gen alpha likely won't be much different. There's a difference between understanding how to use technology and understanding the intricacies of technology, understanding how to regulate or use different functions of it. The majority of boomers know how to use a modern phone. They don't know how to properly take care of the phone nor do they understand how it functions, but they know how to use it. A lot of younger people aren't much different.

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[–] mipadaitu 3 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Wait, how exactly could a crypto hash connect a vote to a voter and still be anonymous...

[–] plerwf 3 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Can identify one way, from voter to vote. If a voter for some valid reason has to re-vote, the hash-id could be used to only count the person's vote with the last timestamp.

[–] diffusive 4 points 4 weeks ago

What would you hash, though? The name? The SSN? These are all know plaintexts…

If you want to de-anonymise a vote with any of these you just make a rainbow table of all voters.

Do you add salt? But now salt becomes a secret… how does the secret is picked? Someone centrally? Back to rainbow table. Everyone picks one? Then the voters has to write the hash… at that point there is no benefit with an unique id that is not really anonymous

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Further down it states:

All of the voters affected by the Mesa County fraud will be offered a new ballot.

So does that mean those voters are counted twice? One fraud and one real, or...?

[–] SuperEars 5 points 4 weeks ago

That's how I interpreted it, yes. The criminal(s) succeeded in getting 3 illegal votes into the count beyond retrieval. The victims of stolen ballots need not lose their votes.

[–] RememberTheApollo_ 3 points 4 weeks ago

It could go a number of ways.

An attempt to stuff a ballot box for their preferred candidate
An attempt to invalidate voting by mail by conducting obvious fraud, then publicly blame vote by mail
An attempt to vote for an opponent to claim the opposition is conducting fraud

[–] [email protected] 37 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

“We don’t know the motive,” she said.

are you fucking serious?

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

Griswold said she also couldn’t discuss the “political implications” of the case, meaning whether the person or people behind the scheme had a political motivation and what candidates they voted for on the stolen ballots.

“We don’t know the motive,” she said.

Hmm, can we place bets on which party the fraudulent votes supported? And maybe taking a look at that would give a clue to the motive?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 weeks ago

If they were a Democrat, we would "know the motive."

[–] DarkCloud 22 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (14 children)

It will be important to publicize which side is implicated ASAP - and do so clearly with an authoritative voice.

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