Barack Obama won his first election using a different procedural trick — he looked up his three opponents' ballot petitions, and challenged enough of the signatures on the petitions that they were all delisted.
In the Florida case it was/is a common surname, not a full name. In this Russian case, two humans changed their full name to match. Presumably paid to do so. Very different situations
Edit: in the Russian case, they also changed their appearance to match
According to a sibling comment, this strategy goes back to JohnF Kennedy at least. Except that the Russians take it to the next level
In Florida a sham candidate with the same surname as the real candidate paid to run to siphon off votes from the real candidate. Completely different. Not at all similar. Nothing in common. Nothing to see in Florida, move along please.
I didn't know this. It's absolutely bizarre. I wonder why Russia even bothers with elections -- it's clearly not on the bandwagon for western liberalism, which seems fair enough to me, but then why go through the motions?
The third of those links is the most important: in the Florida case the spoiler candidate and the man paying him to run were charged with a crime. This doesn't reverse the election, whose outcome was almost certainly changed by the scheme, but it might deter others from following this playbook.
In Russian they have the term 'political technology' [1], which means the manipulation of elections by legal means, such as creating momentum for a candidate by means of opionion polls with biased/framed questions. Now according to wikipedia, the second trick in the list are doppelganger candidates. I didn't find a proper translation of the Russian term 'political technology', how do you say that in English?
Correction: 'political consulting' is probably the correct translation, however it doesn't convey the same cynicism expressed by 'political technology'.
I really, really, really hope this becomes illegal.
In one of the FL cases, reporters went to the house of the "other" one and he literally couldn't say why he was on the ballot. That is my recollection of the story I read at the time.
A friend of mine (and my successor as chairman of the Chicago Republican Party) filed a case in the U.S. Supreme Court this week over the same tactic right here in Chicago.
Not this particular case but just to give context on why padding the primary with sham candidates of the same ethnic group is an issue, but also in Chicago it has happened that people change their names to imply certain ethnic/heritage/characteristics like Phillip Spiwak (R) became Shannon P. O’Malley (D) to win an elected judge position in 2018 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/illinois-judge-candidat...
There was a movie about a person searching their Irish ancestors. Ended with the protagonist confronting their father, who admitted they made it up to win votes. The movie must be decades old now.
Sorry, not from the US so I might be missing something, but the link you posted was about someone from the Democrats. Did your friend switch parties after that election (I wouldn't be surprised if that kind of thing had happened)?
It's a marriage of convenience. Until Madigan is indicted by the FBI (probably happening in the next 12mos, his underlings are helping the FBI now), if you are a (D) on his bad side, your choices are to exit Chicago politics or switch parties.
"Illegal" means contrary to the law. Plenty of things that are illegal but carry no criminal penalties.
As a practical matter, the court would rule that sham candidates are impermissible, and then their opponents would have an opportunity to remove them from the ballot via a civil lawsuit, or seek sanctions again whoever put them up, or collect civil damages, or in an extreme case overturn an election altogether.
This reminds me of the 2019 Canadian federal election. There was a new party in that election led by a man named Maxime Bernier called the People's Party. They're a far-right populist party and generally awful. Bernier himself was running in Beauce, Quebec, which he had represented through the Conservative party since 2006 before he had created the People's Party.
But then the Rhinoceros Party, a satirical political party, announced a new candidate for Beauce named... Maxime Bernier. When asked about the confusion, the Rhinoceros Party's Maxime Bernier said, "If you're not sure, then vote for both!".
The Conservative candidate won with 22817 votes, the People's Party candidate came second with 16772, and the Rhinoceros Party candidate came last with 1072 votes and another 1147 were rejected. This left the People's Party with no seats in parliament.
Well, in Canada (and I'd assume elsewhere, but I've not checked) our ballots include party affiliation, so it's pretty easy to tell the candidates apart if you're paying any attention at all.
> Note that even if the Rhinoceros votes went for the peoples party the same thing would have happened...
Which is probably for the best. If this type of trickery had made a meaningful difference, the people fooled by the trick would have had some legitimate complaints. Moreover it would have really undermined the credibility of the winner, even if it wasn't their doing.
It appears that Maxim Bernier from the Rhinoceros party hasn't registered to run in this year's election. I wonder if they've been blocked from doing so?
> There was a new party in that election led by a man named Maxime Bernier called the People's Party. They're a far-right populist party and generally awful.
Describing the PPC as "far-right" is a good way to out yourself as far-left.
It’s not much of an “outing” to reveal that I believe the Canada they want is antithetical to my belief system, and that I find the party thoroughly disgusting and worthy of mockery.
They're the only party to oppose vaccine passports in Canada. So can't be all bad. Polling around 5-8% now and gaining, high enough might make a big difference who next leader of Canada will be. On the conspiracy side, some are speculating he's a plant to help Trudeau.
Cbc's polling average has them at 4.8%, which isn't inside your 5-8% interval... but it's true that they have been slowly trending upwards... though whether you should prefer a momentum model or a reversion to the mean model for polling variation is unclear.
Separately, giving airtime to ridiculous conspiracies that even you don't believe is simply not helpful.
Why do they even go through this much trouble when they can just count votes such that Единая Россия comes out as a winner, like they did on every election I remember. They stuff ballots into boxes. They invalidate ballots with "wrong" votes. They just simply change the numbers in the protocols without anyone rechecking or recounting. Worst of all, the people who do it are usually school teachers, because polling stations are often in schools.
Yes, I'll go and vote anyway. No, this won't change the outcome, but at least I'll be able to tell myself that I did my part.
It's terribly hard to actually falsify the vote counts across thousands of polling places. In theory, someone observing the process, as should be legal everywhere, will notice the irregularities.
It's not impossible, obviously–especially if you have full control of at least anyone important. But plausible deniability suffers rather fast, and that's a valuable assets at the Putin-level of dic(tator|k)ishness.
Usually only a few polling places actually determine an election. Based on historical vote data, you'd only flip votes in the few locations where it actually matters; for example, a few counties in a few swing states, or anywhere where the votes can be cured or recounted without being observed.
It's strange that people really don't realize how easy it is to cheat; just a little bit of leverage in the right place can tip an election.
Oh they interfere with observers a lot. It's a battle, really.
Sometimes, in some far-flung region, an election will end up being fair. Then they still find a way to ultimately "fix" the outcome — see what happened in Khabarovsk with everyone's favorite mayor Sergey Furgal. They found a court case on him from very long ago, arrested him, flew him to Moscow, then Putin dismissed him from mayorship "for loss of trust". Yeah sure, people elected him and had no problems with him, but it's lack of Putin's trust that caused him to lose his office against his and people's will.
Lots of discussions whether it will work or not. Same as 10k rubles payout for seniors. Likely people are not so much stupid and such things won't work per se. But in Russia there is the second step: falsify the elections and explain that people voted for a fake or for the party they hate because of the payout. A casual observer will have less questions, or there will be an "explanation".
It is especially prevalent among parties oriented towards Russian speaking populace in the Baltics.
I've never seen it work, but maybe there is a bit of Ross Perot(not that Clinton/Bush looked like Perot) effect.
PS it is hilarious that when I made a comment I didn't realize this could be taken as a what-aboutism comment.
So on a meta level I should be more lenient when posters do similar things in other threads. Maybe not every poster is actively engaging in organized https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism but there is an urge to draw parallels on some psychological level.
It would be an interesting analysis to see if notable names appear more often as candidates and do they draw more plus(FOR) signs than regular candidates.
I think you can usually ignore people who complain about "whataboutism" - on HN at least it usually boils down to someone trying to dismiss a legitimate comparison with "Hey you can't say that, I said it first!"
In Spain not much years ago happened a slightly different but related trick. A party changed late their logo in the ballots to a circle. Casually their rivals from the opposite ideology had adopted before a thin circle as a logo in the voting sheets (shared by all parties). The second circle was more thick (and more visible) than the other and had different letters inside. Clearly different for people with a good sight, maybe not so much for elders.
I bet that this didn't helped at the hour of counting the ballots and I wouldn't be surprised to know that a few votes were assigned wrongly that night at the slighest opportunity.
Readit News
https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2020/12/02/the-name-is-the-...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/20/florida-ele...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
Note the two "Joseph Russo" entries on the ballot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_history_of_John_F._K...
Edit: in the Russian case, they also changed their appearance to match
According to a sibling comment, this strategy goes back to JohnF Kennedy at least. Except that the Russians take it to the next level
Dead Comment
Correction: 'political consulting' is probably the correct translation, however it doesn't convey the same cynicism expressed by 'political technology'.
[1] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%82...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_consulting
In one of the FL cases, reporters went to the house of the "other" one and he literally couldn't say why he was on the ballot. That is my recollection of the story I read at the time.
Dead Comment
https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-michael-madigan-c...
If we win this thing, then filing sham candidates will become illegal in the U.S. It's an utterly corrupt practice.
Also this seems to be civil case, not a criminal one, so I'm not sure how it'd make anything illegal?
As a practical matter, the court would rule that sham candidates are impermissible, and then their opponents would have an opportunity to remove them from the ballot via a civil lawsuit, or seek sanctions again whoever put them up, or collect civil damages, or in an extreme case overturn an election altogether.
Deleted Comment
But then the Rhinoceros Party, a satirical political party, announced a new candidate for Beauce named... Maxime Bernier. When asked about the confusion, the Rhinoceros Party's Maxime Bernier said, "If you're not sure, then vote for both!".
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/maxime-bernier-rhino...
The Conservative candidate won with 22817 votes, the People's Party candidate came second with 16772, and the Rhinoceros Party candidate came last with 1072 votes and another 1147 were rejected. This left the People's Party with no seats in parliament.
Note that even if the Rhinoceros votes went for the peoples party the same thing would have happened...
Which is probably for the best. If this type of trickery had made a meaningful difference, the people fooled by the trick would have had some legitimate complaints. Moreover it would have really undermined the credibility of the winner, even if it wasn't their doing.
"This" implies that the Rhinoceros Party prank KEPT Bernier from having a seat. Simple math shows that's not the case.
Describing the PPC as "far-right" is a good way to out yourself as far-left.
Separately, giving airtime to ridiculous conspiracies that even you don't believe is simply not helpful.
Yes, I'll go and vote anyway. No, this won't change the outcome, but at least I'll be able to tell myself that I did my part.
It's not impossible, obviously–especially if you have full control of at least anyone important. But plausible deniability suffers rather fast, and that's a valuable assets at the Putin-level of dic(tator|k)ishness.
It's strange that people really don't realize how easy it is to cheat; just a little bit of leverage in the right place can tip an election.
Sometimes, in some far-flung region, an election will end up being fair. Then they still find a way to ultimately "fix" the outcome — see what happened in Khabarovsk with everyone's favorite mayor Sergey Furgal. They found a court case on him from very long ago, arrested him, flew him to Moscow, then Putin dismissed him from mayorship "for loss of trust". Yeah sure, people elected him and had no problems with him, but it's lack of Putin's trust that caused him to lose his office against his and people's will.
It is especially prevalent among parties oriented towards Russian speaking populace in the Baltics.
I've never seen it work, but maybe there is a bit of Ross Perot(not that Clinton/Bush looked like Perot) effect.
PS it is hilarious that when I made a comment I didn't realize this could be taken as a what-aboutism comment.
So on a meta level I should be more lenient when posters do similar things in other threads. Maybe not every poster is actively engaging in organized https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism but there is an urge to draw parallels on some psychological level.
I'm from the Baltics and I've never ever heard of anything similar going on in any of the three countries.
Unused ballots are good for bathroom reading :)
When I say fringe these parties get less than 1% and are rarely in the news. So the tactic is not working.
Here is just one example from 2010 elections. https://www.cvk.lv/cgi-bin/wdbcgiw/base/komisijas2010.CVKAND...
Obviously that guy is not the Russian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxim_Galkin
It would be an interesting analysis to see if notable names appear more often as candidates and do they draw more plus(FOR) signs than regular candidates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Distinguished_Gentleman
Talk about life imitating art and all that.
I bet that this didn't helped at the hour of counting the ballots and I wouldn't be surprised to know that a few votes were assigned wrongly that night at the slighest opportunity.