Voter Fraud versus Election Fraud

There are quite a few ways to crock an election.  The one Republicans are fond of claiming, voter fraud, is fairly easy to understand: a person turns in a ballot using a false identity.  Once upon a time, this was fairly easy to do but with the advent of computer identity checks, it is now all but impossible.  Recent studies have found a few dozen credible cases, nation wide, in all the elections since 2000.  Nearly all of these are a family member casting a vote using an absentee ballot for a recently deceased loved one, typically forging their signature.   This is illegal, of course, but one or two such votes per election isn't going to affect anything.   It may even help the mourner with their grief.

Much more common is election fraud.  There are a whole bunch of ways to do this.  Many of them rely on a cooperative election official, although sometimes, inattention is sufficient.

The easiest to understand is ballot box stuffing.   A bunch of ballots for the preferred candidate are produced and put into the ballot box.  If ID checks are being done, a source of identities of people unlikely to vote is needed.   Back in the old days, this could be obtained from the local obituary column.  In some areas, black people weren't allowed to vote themselves, but their ballots would be cast, almost certainly voting for a different candidate than they themselves would have chosen.

There's a modern version of this.  Most vote counting machines have a mechanism for loading an initial vote count.  This is done in case the count was stopped mid-process for some reason, it can be restarted without having to start from the beginning.    The movie Hacking Democracy documents this.  This was found to have actually happened in the presidential election in 2004 in Ohio, although the specific precinct was recounted and the 5000 bogus votes removed.  119,000 votes would have swung that particular election.   The recounts that Jill Stein pushed for might have detected such a problem.  The one that actually was completed did not, although there was enough interference it might have been missed.

Even more insidious is voter suppression.   There are quite a few ways of doing this, and the Republicans have been doing nearly all of them.  Basically they involve some way of removing a legitimate voter from the list of registered voters.  Stringent Voter ID laws are designed to make it difficult for some communities to obtain the needed ID and easy for others.  For instance, a lot of poor voters do not have a car, and so don't have any use for a drivers license.  By simply making it inconvenient for such people to get the photo ID, lots of voters can be suppressed.  For example by making sure the nearest office where they can get the ID is a multi-hour bus ride away.

Another is to create a list of people who's registration might no longer be valid.  For example, they moved out of the state.  Or they were convicted of a crime.  In the election of 2000, the Republicans used a process called Caging to produce a list of people who seemed to have moved:  a flyer about some Republican issue was sent to voters suspected to vote for Democrats.  The envelope was marked "do not forward, return to sender".  They thus obtained a list of voters who had moved, had gone away to college, were on duty in the military, etc.  At least 36,000 voters were suppressed in Florida this way in 2000.  Bush won the state by about 500 votes.   The new version of this is called Crosscheck.  Voters deemed likely Democrats who had a similar name as someone who had moved, often in a different state, would discover that their registration had been rescinded, often discovering for the first time when they went to the polling place.

There are also a number of strategies to keep voters who would have voted for your opponent to do otherwise.  The most obvious is third party candidates. By splitting the vote, they reduce the chance of the other side to win.  In 2016, Jill Stein probably took votes only from Hillary, and Gary Johnson probably split the votes close to evenly.  Had they not been on the ballot, the result in Wisconsin and Michigan would have flipped and Pennsylvania might have too.  Ralph Nader had the same effect in 2000, and John Anderson came close to doing it in 1980.  Nader, Stein and Johnson probably weren't trying to do this--they were "useful idiots"--but Anderson almost certainly was doing it to help Reagan.  This election is widely seen as a Reagan landslide, but it wasn't.   Without Anderson, Reagan still would have won, but by less than 1% in the popular vote.

Republicans have long known that they can benefit by getting people to not vote.  Older, more conservative voters, especially those who are retired or have a very predictable schedule tend to always vote, where younger, busier people sometimes skip it. Making the election seem dishonest and ugly always helps conservative candidates, and Trump exploited this to the utmost.  His constant lies about Hillary and their half-hearted repudiation by the media made a lot of voters think there was something actually wrong with Hillary.  Trump was awful, but Hillary, somehow, was worse in their minds.  A pox on both your houses they said, and either voted for the liar or didn't vote at all. Turnout was down about 7M relative to the election of 2008.   The vast majority of those who didn't turn out tend to vote D...probably 4-5 million Hillary votes.

With a Bang or a Whimper?

We have installed as leader a man determined to undermine nearly all the institutions that have made America a great country, and given the reigns of government to a party so corrupt as to collaborate with him, with a large opposition so emasculated that they can only watch in horror as we are destroyed.  I think there is a chance that our institutions will survive, but not without enormous damage.  Whether this is fatal or not is unclear.  Much depends upon the order of events.

I think there is about a 20% chance that we end in nuclear holocaust.   Putin's forces manipulated the election and are plainly in a position to take enormous advantage, and it seems pretty likely that Trump is aware of what he owes them (possibly including blackmail) and is installing a pro-Russia Secretary of State and intends to end sanctions and other things that have been hurting Russia.  But he is a shallow, petty, vindictive man and it is probable that some slight or disagreement will shatter the alliance.  Will he resort to nuclear weapons?  Most likely not, but for the first time since the start of the Cold War, we have a president who doesn't seem to quite understand about Mutually Assured Destruction.

Russia is not the only nuclear threat though.  Trump and Tillerson have both stumbled badly on China already and Trump is plainly trying to make the trade war with them more hostile.  Almost 6% of China's GDP comes from exports to the US, which China is certainly happy about and would like to preserve, while Trump wants to sharply reduce it.  China probably won't respond to tariffs or other trade intervention with nuclear threats, but they may put up other trade complications and Trump might respond to one of those with a nuclear threat.

Pakistan and North Korea are both less than friendly toward us and both have nuclear weapons.  I can't see them attacking us, but I can see a Trump first strike, which may force the hand of one of their allies.  If Trump breaks the nuclear agreement with Iran as promised, it is likely that they will be able to build a bomb in a few years instead of being prevented from working on one for ten years as the agreement imposes.  Again, a Trump first strike is a likely outcome.  This probably won't happen for four or five years, by which time Trump will either be out of office or dictator for life.

Trump plainly wants to make himself dictator.  There are lots of checks and balances to make this difficult, but Trump is plainly aware of them and is trying to end them.  The most important is a functioning free press.  The internet has done terrible harm to the media, both in that real reporting is having more difficulty getting funded and fake reporting has found lots of distribution.   Although there have been previous presidents that could not have gained office without a substantial lift from propaganda, Trump is the first that would have no support at all without it.  He has set about attacking the real media, calling the NY Times and others "dishonest" for quoting him accurately, blocking credentials or refusing to answer questions from networks that have been critical of him, constantly emphasizing distractions when there are real issues.  The press has made it clear that they won't back down, but if congress supports him, he might win.

The scariest possibility, it seems to me, is what I'm calling a "Reichstag fire" incident.  Hitler was made chancellor of Germany on 30 Jan 1933 after his party won a plurality in the German Parliament, called the "Reichstag", but his party only had 33% of the seats and stiff opposition from the other parties, which would not cooperate with him.  After less than a month of this, the Reichstag building burned down (27 Feb 1933), almost certainly started by supporters of Hitler although blamed on outside agitators, and the following day, Hitler demanded, and got, the "Reichstag Fire Decree", which suspended most of the civil rights of the German people and removed most of the power of the Reichstag.

The US constitution prevents such a decree from happening here except "during rebellion or invasion", but depending upon circumstances, it's not clear how much of a barrier that will be.  For the moment, Trump has the support of congress and after a terrorist act they might fall for it.   I would not put it past Trump to arrange the terrorist act and some patsies, just as Hitler did. There are plenty of people who know this history, but not enough of them in congress, and there may be 50 million voters or more who would not believe it of Trump, no matter how clear the evidence.

Obviously, if this happens, America is over.   We will be a police state within a year or two and will never have a fair election again.    There will be some good times for the American economy during this, just as there was for Germany in the mid '30s, but it won't last for long and it's very likely that it ends in nuclear holocaust.

I rate the chance of Trump becoming a dictator of this sort at around 10%.  If he tries it and fails, he will be impeached or worse.  I'm sure he knows that the time to try it is while he's still got a lot of support in congress and before too many more of his 62 million realize the gigantic mistake they've made. 


Highly likely is that Trump succeeds in wrecking enough American institutions that the voters repudiate him in 2020.   Over half of Americans are hurting, but there's a bubble in urban real estate, banking, insurance and a few other fields, which is sending the stock market to record heights.  Like all bubbles, this one will end and since Trump and his congress have no clue whatever about macroeconomics, they will react very poorly when that happens, extending the crash to hurt nearly everybody, while largely immunizing the people that caused it, just as in past crashes.  I think there's a real possibility of a depression worse than the 1930s.

I rate the likelihood of such a crash occurring at about 90%, but one of the other outcomes might occur first.  The crash might be part of what brings on the "Reichstag fire" or nuclear confrontation. So I rank the likelihood of a terrible crash and depression at about 50%, Trump and the congress responding correctly to the crash with massive deficit spending at about 10%, and the crash not happening at about 10%.   If the crash occurs during the election of 2018, our chances go way up: the Ds will win a huge majority in congress and respond better to events, and Trump will be impeached, with Pence defanged and unable to get re-elected.

Most likely what will happen is that Trump will go too far on some issue for congressional republicans who are already wary of him, and they will impeach him.   He's already done more than enough to earn it...he violated the Emoluments clause the second he took the oath, and there's surely lots more.   He'll quit (faking illness) before the hearings get far.  After nuclear holocaust and police state, this is one of the worst outcomes, because Pence will be a rubber stamp for congressional republicans worst impulses, where Trump at least gives lip service to protecting regular people.

Whatever happens, after a year or two of Trump-Pence administration, America will be a lot less great than it has been.   I think going back to the pre-ACA health insurance system is about a 50-50 chance, privatizing medicare (turning it into something very similar to what ACA is today) at around 30%, privatizing social security also at around 30%, almost complete destruction of financial regulation at about 80%, further destruction of unions at about 90%, devastating rule changes to the EPA close to 100%, rapidly worsening climate change at about 90%, lots more.  All of this is likely to cause a huge spike in unemployment and will certainly cause a huge spike in American misery.

Longest Supercharger Hop

This is based on https://supercharge.info and lists the hops between Tesla Superchargers that are the longest on routes which are ostensibly complete and have no real alternates.   Despite my car having rated range of 260 miles, I find that 210 is about as far as I dare go in flat country in nice weather if I've fully charged the car, and 160 is about as far as I dare push it if it's hilly or the weather is bad, or I don't want to charge through the full taper, which takes over an hour.

172 Centralia-Ellensburg, WA    Tacoma and Snoqualmie Pass in the way.  way too far
170 Burlington-Ellensburg, WA  Seattle and Snoqualmie Pass in the way.  way too far.
165 The Dalles, OR-Centralia, WA.  Sandy, OR, which is a bit out of the way, opened in late 2015
158 Eureka-Ukiah, CA.   Hilly.  too far without a 100% charge or in bad weather.
151 Burlington-Centralia, WA    Seattle is in the middle so traffic might create a problem.
147 Barstow-Needles, CA
147 Kingman-Flagstaff, AZ
146 Lincoln City-Bandon, OR.  Fairly flat
144 Gallup-Albuquerque, NM
138 Springfield-Grants-Pass, OR.    Uphill southbound

I can't find any routes in the east that push these limits.   There are routes which are not yet completed, but I don't count those here.   See: Suggested Supercharger Locations II, and Interstates and Superchargers.

(A central problem with EVs is that the infrastructure is still being built.  It's about where the petroleum infrastructure was in 1915 or so.  If you're driving a gasoline car on paved roads, there are very few places in the US where you need to worry about finding a gas station within about 10 miles.  With an EV, there are still plenty of places with NO place to charge for hundreds of miles.  You need to stick to known routes.  When you're close to home, EVs are vastly better than gas cars.  But long trips are a problem.

101 between Eureka and Ukiah is particularly frustrating, because it's near the limit of the car on a good day.  The very few J1772s and 14-50s are often closed.  Something needs to be built in Garberville or Leggett.)



addenda 8Apr2017 A new and very large supercharger is under construction in Monroe, WA, near the intersection of US-2, WA-522 and WA-203.  This is not too bad an option for people headed from Burlington to Ellensburg, although it's clearly meant for people going from Seattle to Stevens Pass and points east.  There's a proposal for an I-605 that would bypass the Seattle area and use the routes of US-2, WA-203 and WA-18.  It's a good idea, but political will for such projects died with the November 1980 election.  The existing roads don't meet Interstate standards, but 18 and 2 are not far from it.  203 is largely through rural floodplain and would need a dike or elevation, and southern part would need to be re-routed to bypass Fall City and Snoqualmie Ridge.

Going to the Moon

The last man to have stood on the Moon, Gene Cernan, died today at 82.  Our goals as a nation, as a species, seem to have changed since he climbed back onto the lunar lander in 1972.

When I was a kid, the plan was to launch ever increasing explorations into space--first low earth orbit, then the moon, then perhaps permanent manned space stations, ultimately to include Mars and other planets, along with the asteroid belt.  It was presumed that we'd have hundreds or even thousands of people permanently in space by the start of the 21st century.  Just look at the vision of the great movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

That didn't happen.  It turns out that the space program was largely a byproduct of the military's quest for ever more powerful weapons.  The boosters used to put men into orbit in the Mercury and Gemini program were re-purposed ICBMs and the vast majority of things actually put into for the first 30 years or so of space flight were spy-in-the-sky stuff, like the KeyHole orbiting cameras.  Even the first planned space station, the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, was really a spy satellite and when robots fulfilled the things capabilities, it was cancelled.

But there are commercial purposes to space.  Weather and communications satellites are extremely valuable.  There is science that can be done better in space than on the ground--the space telescope and robot missions to other planets are illustrations.  There is enormous mineral wealth up there too.  It's much easier to get stuff from space, even from the asteroid belt, onto the earth than it is to get stuff up there.  It's easier yet to use it up there.  The time will come, I believe that a large fraction of our satellites will actually be built in space.  Nearly everything we need is there--but not the people to do the work.

Robots do a lot of things well, but they need a guiding hand.  And that hand cannot be more than a tiny fraction of a light-second away, lest the latency overwhelm the control.  The only way to build a satellite in space is for at least some of the workers to be up there.  This means permanent occupation.  I think the way to do it either to do a rotating ring style space station, or even an O'Neill cylinder.  They are impractical much smaller than about 1000 foot diameter (where 1.2 RPM would give 1/4rd G).   A cylinder 1000 feet in diameter and 100 feet long would have 31,400 square feet of bottom floor space, and would probably be built 10 floors deep or so which probably means a population of a hundred or so.   That's a big thing.

The moon is almost as good and has some advantages. The moon's gravity well is 1/6th what the earth's is, which means it takes a lot less energy and fuel than getting off of earth.  Unfortunately, there's no atmosphere to slow landings, so landing takes just as much energy as taking off.  But as SpaceX has been demonstrating, computers are getting pretty good at this.   Most of the people will need to live underground, to protect them from radiation, but there's no shortage of material.  The biggest problem is water.  But there's lots of oxygen, lots of silicon with which to make solar panels, lots of metals, etc.   The weakest link is hydrogen, which may be available in the minerals, but may be difficult to extract.   And there are so many advantages to building satellites on the moon that it's hard to imagine we won't eventually do that.

We can also build gigantic space telescopes and radio telescopes, completely free from atmospheric and radio interference, by simply building them on the far side of the moon.   Who knows what else?

Weapons Inspectors in Iraq

Here's the timeline of weapons inspections in Iraq, with their context and a focus on how various administrations dealt with it.   I'll keep refining it.

1953: in one of its very first operations, the CIA leads a coup to overthrow the popular leader Mohammad Mosaddegh with their puppet, Reza Shah Palavi.  The justification for the US involvement in the coup was that Mosaddegh had been making treaties with its neighbor to the north, USSR.  In fact, the problem was that he had been nationalizing the resources of the Anglo-Persian oil company.  A-P was renamed a few years later to British Petroleum and later BP.
1959: USSR begins helping Iraq build nuclear power system
1968: Saddam Hussein is a leader of the coup that takes power in Iraq.  Initially not its main leader, he gradually assumes control until in 1979 he was "elected" president.
Saddam had supported the development of gas WMD for years.
1979: After 26 years of repression by the puppet regime the US and UK had installed in Iran, religious extremists overthrow the government, capturing the US embassy there.
1980-1988: Iran and Iraq go to war, Iran with weapons supplied during the long US/UK occupation, Iraq with Soviet weapons.  Iraq uses poison gas weapons.  Because of the recent hostility with their longtime ally Iran, the Reagan administration sides with Iraq.  The war ends in stalemate.
1990: Saddam's diplomats ask Bush's diplomats if they have any objections to clarifying certain border questions with Saudi Arabia.  They say no, thinking it was an unpopulated desert area.
Aug 1990: Saddam invades Kuwait, capturing it in a few days.
Jan 1991: Huge coalition recaptures Kuwait and its oilfields, proceeding into southern Iraq, but stops after 100 hours, leaving Saddam in power.  Saddam is forced to accept several concessions, including the permanent installation of UN weapons inspectors, but he hassles them constantly, and he brutally put down rebellions while occupying soldiers were watching, but helpless to do anything because they were not violations of the naive treaty the coalition and Saddam had worked out.  Numerous WMD sites are found and destroyed.

Aug 1998: forces led by Bin Laden truck bombed two embassies in africa, killing over 200, including 12 americans, and injuring over 4000.
A few days later Clinton sends cruise missiles to Al Qaeda facilities in Sudan and Afghanistan, supposedly missing Bin Laden himself by less than 5 minutes.
Congressional republicans scream that the response was all about deflecting attention from the Lewinsky affair
Sept 1998: Emboldened by these republicans, Saddam raises increasing barriers and threats to the UN weapons inspectors, who had been there since 1991, eventually forcing them to leave for their own protection.
Dec 1998: Clinton responds by sending cruise missiles to Iraq, destroying several actual WMD sites that had been found.
republicans respond the same way, even more vehemently this time.
Oct 2000: Al Qaeda bombs USS Cole in Yemen.
Clinton sends the FBI but was too intimidated to bomb the obvious culprits again just a few weeks before the election.




Jan 2001: Terrorism adviser Richard Clarke warns about Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.  
Apr 2001: CIA director Tenant warns the same thing.  Wolfowitz and Rice poo pooh the warnings and Clarke is demoted
July 2001: Clarke insists there will be a "spectacular attack very soon"
Aug 2001: CIA tells Bush that "Bin Laden determined to strike US"
Bush replies thanks, you've covered your ass.
Sept 11 2001...
CIA and special forces mount a relatively effective campaign in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda flees to Pakistan where US military can't follow.
Nov 2002: a new crop of inspectors are sent to Iraq.
The bulk of the resources in Afghanistan are moved to prepare for attacking Iraq, long before the job was complete there.
Feb 2003: Cheney and Bush pressure Colin Powell to present a fraudulent case before the UN
Mar 2003: Bush orders the inspectors removed from Iraq. When their leader, Hans Blix, complained that their work was not complete, Cheney threatened him. consequently Blix stayed silent until his inspectors were safe, but wrote a book about it.

Blix had believed that there were weapons, but the information the Bush administration gave him was useless and much was obviously fraudulent. the CIA had repeatedly said that this was likely the case and that the information was obtained from untrustworthy sources. Cheney had given this same bogus information to Powell.

The except for the initial coup in 1953, the CIA actually comes out of this whole thing looking pretty good. they're dealing with a lot of information, much of it from dubious sources. Gingrich, Lott, Bush, Cheney, Tenet, Wolfowitz and a few others were the culprits.

All the -stans

"-stan" is the Farsi or Urdu suffix that means roughly "place of", or "place where one stands".  There are presently 8 countries that end with this suffix, all in central Asia.  All but two were part of the Soviet Union until its breakup.  Pakistan (and its relative, Bangladesh, which was once called "East Pakistan") were the Muslim areas of Britain's India colonies at the time of partition in 1947.  Afghanistan managed some level of independence through the "Great Game".  Dagestan is still a Russian subject.

Afghanistan  is a country in south central Asia, between Iran and Pakistan
Dagestan is a subject country of Russia in south western Asia, east of Chechnya and Georgia, and north of Azerbaijan, along the western shore of the Caspian Sea
Kazakhstan is a country in central Asia, north of India the Caspian Sea, and south of Russia
Kyrgyzstan  is a country in south central Asia, along part of the border between Kazakhstan and India
Pakistan is  is a country in south central Asia, between Pakistan and India
Tajikistan  is a country in south central Asia, between Kyrgystan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan
Turkmenistan is a country in south central Asia, between Uzbekistan and Iran, on the southeastern Caspian Sea
Uzbekistan is a country in south central Asia, between Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan

In addition there were many regions that are now part of a larger country that were "stan". Nuristan is a province in eastern Afghanistan.  It was once called "Kafiristan" and Kipling wrote about it in "The Man Who Would Be King".  Balochistan is a region which lies in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.   It's very arid, and is the home of a great deal of insurgency.

The Registan is the public square at the center of Samarkand, Uzbekistan

The Rigestan Desert is in southeastern Afghanistan

Rigestan is also a town in southwestern Iran

Sustainable Rates

Conservatives are fond of pointing out the hypocrisy of protesting oil drilling in plastic (made from oil) kayaks or protesting logging while living in wooden houses.   For purposes of argument, I'll ignore the nonsensical disconnect and pretend that it's a credible point.

Wood is potentially a sustainable resource.  If you harvest it at a rate lower than can restore itself, there is no direct risk from logging.  For much of the 20th century, this was indeed what was practiced, but by the 1960s, demand had exceeded capacity.  Especially in the 1980s under the Reagan/Watt regime, a high fraction of the old growth lumber in America was harvested and sold off, a huge part of it to the far east.

Total worldwide consumption of wood today is about 4B cubic meters.   There are about 4B hectares of forest in the world (down from 5.9B before industrialization.  We've been losing about 13M hectares/yr).    Canadian forests contain about 432 cubic meters per hectare.   Extrapolating that to the whole world, if we were to harvest 1 cubic meter per year per hectare, the forests would thus have 432 years to recover.   My forester friend tells me that if we harvest 10% or less every 15 or 20 years, that can be carried on indefinitely without harming the forest ecosystem--that's more than double that 1 m^3 per hectare rate.  But that's not what we're doing.  We mostly clear cut, in patches of a few hectares at a time, and during the '80s, we basically clear cut alternate quads, leaving a patchwork of tiny forests. This will recover eventually, but it'll take hundreds of years, and in the meantime, we've wrecked the local ecosystem, which will make it take longer to recover than necessary.  Worse yet, we're permanently clearing areas for agriculture, industrial and residential use.

Lots of privately owned forests are harvested sustainably.  We know it can be done.  We need for the government to protect our public forests this same way.



Total proven oil reserves are about 1.3T bbl.  Consumption has roughly tripled in the last 50 years, from about 11B bbl/yr in 1965 to about 33B bbl/yr today.  This suggests that the total amount of oil that was theoretically available at the start of the 20th century was about 2T bbl.    That oil took about 200M years for the earth to make.  2T/200M = 10,000.    So a sustainable rate for oil is about 10,000 bbl/year.    We are consuming it at 3 million times that rate.  


World coal production is about 8B tonnes.  The best guesses I can find say we can keep this up for about another 100 years, which suggests that there are just about 1T tonnes left and there were probably about 1.5T to start with.   Like oil, hard coal takes around 200-300M years for the earth to create.   That means we can sustainably harvest about 5000 Tonnes per year.  But there's a difference.  Soft coals such as lignite can form much more quickly, in the order of 5M years.  That might give us a sustainable rate for those coals of 250,000 Tonnes per year.  We use between 32,000 and 1.3M times too much to be sustainable.