I was perusing the list of counties in Texas (as one does) and came across a peculiar county named Loving County, which has a population of 64, and yet had 66 votes cast in the 2020 election and 97 in the 2024 election. I asked Claude what's up, expecting a boring answer (like, there's seasonal workers in November who didn't get counted by the census).

But no: the answer is far more interesting!

You see, Loving County is both tiny and rich -- it has a $60M budget, because of oil and gas money. A small number of voters can end up controlling a large budget. And so apparently it keeps having a problem where lots of voters register to vote illegally in order to enrich themselves. The latest iteration of this scheme is led by some guy from Indiana named Malcolm Tanner.

This has apparently been a problem since 1893 (!) and has resulted in lots of overturned elections.