The Russians just had to flip 40,000 votes in three States

[edhopper]

to give Trump the victory.
Trump beat Hillary by about 80,000 votes in WI, MI and PA.
But the math tells us if half of those were flipped, Hillary would have won.
Just a few votes targeted in Dem heavy districts.

This has to be seriously considered. The MSM seems to think questioning the integrity of the voting system will cause a problem.
The problem is ignoring that the integrity has already been compromised.

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. Exactly!

[EndGOPPropaganda]

46. And less than 100k for the Senate!!

In those SAME STATES, when we know downballot races are affected by presidential votes:

Toomey (R) won by only 85k votes in PA
Johnson (R) won by only ~100k votes in WI


Flip 50k votes in WI and PA, and NO Gorsuch. No Kavanaugh. No circuit judges. No district judges.

Not only did the Russians launch a presidential coup, they launched a judicial coup that will have effects for decades - long after this president is in prison.

[dawnie51]

2. Russians wouldn't have known......

the exact moves to take. Someone(s) guided them, to specific precincts and had the numbers and info. Someone American. And that's where we're going next.

[edhopper]

12. Yes

COLLUSION!!

[dalton99a]

19. Brad Parscale

Photo Credit: https://twitter.com/parscale

https://www.alternet.org/election-2016/new-details-emerge-showing-trump-campaign-and-russia-were-same-cyber-mudslinging
New Details Emerge Proving Trump Campaign and Russia Both Went After Online Clinton Supporters
Were they working in parallel or together?
By Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet
July 16, 2017, 11:14 AM GMT

it's becoming clear that the micro-targeting of Clinton voters in swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin was certainly done by the Trump campaign—and also possibly done by Russia.

The big unanswered question is just how closely coordinated those operations were.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/09/donald-trumps-digital-campaign-directors-company-paid-94-million.html
Trump’s digital campaign director was paid $1,500 to set up his election website. Then he raked in $94 million when Trump won
Lucy Handley
Published 8:52 AM ET Mon, 9 Oct 2017 Updated 12:33 PM ET Mon, 9 Oct 2017

[SunSeeker]

42. The face of evil. nt

[FakeNoose]

85. Steve Bannon was in on this

...and I wouldn't be surprised if Roger Stone was also involved.

We already know that Bannon spent a good deal of time with Cambridge Analytica in summer/fall 2016. Also Bannon was the only member of Trump's campaign who insisted that he was going to win, all along. Bannon knew exactly which counties he had to monitor to see the results on election night, and they all fell into place.

I believe he has already shared a lot of this info with Mueller's team. We'll find out.

[mercuryblues]

90. The bonus is

Because of Bannon's White Nationalism and his hatred for the Kushners, he ratted on Jared & Czarina to no end.

[lastlib]

156. Cambridge Analytica......

Rachel Maddow did a piece once on cyberattacks on voter registration databases in various states (Texas was one, I think Pennsylvania and Wisconsin might've been ones--my memory of it is a little fuzzy). Voter lists were stolen, party affiliations were flipped, various other shenaningans. It convinced me that some organized group with a lot of resources was behind it, and Cambridge (with Russian help, perhaps?) wouldn't be a bad bet, I think. The sheer size and breadth of the attack on our democratic processes still floors me, and the GOPee/Russia/Cambridge axis of evil has their greasy, greedy fingerprints all over it. I want to see them ALL burn, every last f&ucking one of them!

[yallerdawg]

3. My question remains...

where are all these "voters" protesting that their votes were changed or not counted?

A bunch of them have expressed regrets - or, even more telling, satisfaction.

But I'm pretty damn sure Democrats in these 3 states know EXACTLY what happened.

[mcar]

5. How would they know if their vote was tampered with?

[yallerdawg]

13. The results of all elections are public record.

Party-insider Democrats and Republicans watch every polling station, every machine, every voter, every count.

Most every election across the country has physically marked ballots. Before certification, physical ballots are tallied to the machne results (machine counts are actually found to be more accurate!).

A "conspiracy" involving so many people on the ground in the USA just doesn't seem possible - even as anti-Republican as I can be!

[sarah FAILIN]

32. We can't track our votes

I don't get ballot 5639 and the ability to track it to a final vote. It doesn't work that way. I DO have a paper ballot, but once it goes into the counter I never know if it was counted correctly or not. The ones I'm really concerned with have no paper components, just a touch screen. There are all sorts of ways that can be messed with and you don't have to do every machine. You only need to get to the programmer.

[yallerdawg]

40. In this case...

do we need to get rid of anonymous voting?

We know how the precinct votes, the demographics, the past results - anomalies.

Where does this end?

[edhopper]

43. First step

paper ballots by law.

At least then recounts can be 100% of the vote.

[exboyfil]

45. Are you sure about the manual tallies everywhere

Wasn't an audit of tallies against physical votes requested in Michigan but was stopped by local rules.

[yallerdawg]

49. A sampling of ballots to machine counts is standard practice.

If there is no statistical impact on the results, there is no need to count every ballot. That's why we bought machines!


Has anyone ever - anywhere - found a machine programmed to miscount? I think THAT would be news, too?

[Lonestarblue]

70. I don't think anyone has ever been allowed to examine the programming for aggregating votes.

It would be very easy to change totals with no one knowing but the hackers—so long as you keep the totals within the realm of reason.

[yallerdawg]

73. How complicated could a counting program be?

I'm sure they are checked by their proprietary manufacturers - nothing reported?

And all the experts say they are not 'hackable' anyway - not on the internet.

Would take a physical presence to 'hack' each individual machine.

Look - we've been going over this for almost 2 years. This is ALL old news.

[edhopper]

76. Actually

they have been shown to be quite hackable.

Just google "hacking voting machines"

[yallerdawg]

123. "Hackable" is not proof.

We know why we lost in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania based on evidence.

Democrats have declared that it won't happen again - this time we'll vote like it matters!

[edhopper]

131. I didn't say it was

I said it needed to be considered.

I said ignoring the possibilities with the evidence of Russian interference is fool hardy.

[Lonestarblue]

97. 2017 DefCon Conference

Hackers took just 90 minutes to break into voting machines as a test. The lack of security with electronic voting systems was widely reported at the time. Here’s an article from Fortune. Whttp://fortune.com/2017/07/31/defcon-hackers-us-voting-machines/. We will likely never know what exactly was done or not done in 2016, but I am concerned about what may happen this Fall and even in 2020 if states do not take voting security more seriously. No one in our national intelligence operation seems to doubt that Russia will try to hack the 2018 elections. They need Republicans to stay in power so no one can thwart Trump’s agenda.

[yallerdawg]

122. These acts would require at least proximity.

Where is the evidence that 'hackers' are going to thousands of sites and using some kind of Wifi connections or breaking into the machines to change votes?

"It could be done" is a far cry from "This is how they stole the election."

We have evidence of what really happened. We don't need to make stuff up.

[watoos]

167. So, dawg, answer me one question,

How many voting machines have been randomly pulled out and independently audited? I'll be waiting with bated breath for an answer. The owners of the voting machines won't allow independent audits because they claim proprietary software. People don't need to be close to the voting place to flip votes, the cheating is already programmed in the software.

Also, check out who owns the voting machines. When our intelligence states that there is no evidence that votes were flipped they are telling us the truth since no machines have been audited.

States control how they vote and until every state goes to paper ballots with watchers at the polls and at the count I have zero confidence that my vote was counted as I cast it.

Can you prove to me that my vote was counted correctly? I vote electronically and get no paper trail.

[yallerdawg]

170. Machines are randomly checked everywhere.

The vast majority of machines do have a paper trail, ballot or voting printout confirmation. I've never had anything BUT a paper ballot in 30 plus years of voting.

Hacker conventions in Vegas are no proof that machines have been hacked in an election. No one has ever produced a machine that has had modified programming to miscount votes. In fact, counting machines have been demonstrated repeatedly to count ballots more exactly than people do.

It's very hard to argue against conjecture and speculation. The thing is, if we don't mention it is conjecture and speculation, the echo chamber turns it into "fact."

Fact - experts of all political stripes tell us over and over that no machines were hacked and vote counts changed.

[robersl]

72. Everyone Is Looking The Wrong Way!!!

They didn't attack the voting machines, they did it the Republican way, by making voters ineligible.

They attacked the voter registration databases, and jimmied the data in Democratic precincts to make people unable to vote. By simply flipping your zip code, you would not show up on the voter rolls at your precinct when you tried to sign in. And if 7 out of 10 voters at that polling place were going to vote Democratic, the Russians gain 4 votes for every 10 they knock out.

And the beauty of the scheme is, the Democrats spend the next 2 years beating themselves up for not showing up to vote instead of sniffing out how the attack went down.

Feb. 7, 2018

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/russians-penetrated-u-s-voter-systems-says-top-u-s-n845721

"We were able to determine that the scanning and probing of voter registration databases was coming from the Russian government."

NBC News reported in Sept. 2016 that more than 20 states had been targeted by the Russians.

[edhopper]

78. Plus

we know that the GOP was already suppressing the vote.

Didn't take much.

[robersl]

86. Exactly

The ultimate collusion.

[yallerdawg]

92. Where are these "voters" I ask again?

Every precinct offers provisional ballots.

Democrats are staring at these voter rolls, too.

I know if I went down to vote like I always do, and they wouldn't let me - you'd know it!

Nobody from the State of Michigan complaining?

[uponit7771]

105. The same place the Florida voters were in 2000

[robersl]

108. These Voters Are In Heavily Democratic Precincts

Yes, provisional ballots, but it is well known that by forcing voters to fill out and follow up on a provisional ballot, a large percentage of them won't do so. This is why Republicans use caging - it works. This was a backdoor caging scheme.

As far as Democrats staring at voter rolls, I don't get your point. If your name is not on the roll because your zip code has been changed, what good would it do for a Democrat to stare at the roll?

And yes, plenty of people complained:

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2018/03/21/thousands-milwaukee-voters-have-been-dropped-rolls-including-some-erroneously/446022002/

44,000 voters were dropped from the rolls in Milwaukee alone. "Many erroneously" as the article says.

[yallerdawg]

119. 44,000 voters protested?

Of course not!

The Democrats I am referencing are the poll watchers! They weren't complicit. They'd notice discrepancies.

Provisional ballots are tallied. Where's the evidence of phenomenal numbers dismissed?

Where's the throngs of "voters" who showed up and had been purged?

There is evidence of all kinds of things - like Jill Stein votes - why don't we stick to that?

[robersl]

127. I'm Not Sure What Part of This You Can't Understand

If my name is not on a voter roll at my polling place, what discrepancy is there for a poll watcher to notice?

I have posted for you the report of voters being "erroneously" omitted from the rolls. People complained, but the Republicans running this state did nothing about it.

I have posted an article documenting 44,000 voters in the city of Milwaukee alone that were dropped from the rolls.

If I give you evidence and you ask me where are the throngs of voters who showed up and had been purged, what are we even talking about here?

[yallerdawg]

129. When your name is not on the voter roll...

and you are a registered voter who WAS on the list, what Democratic poll watcher is not going to take notice when you rant and rave - 44,000 rant and rave, ask what to do - which is someone getting you a provisional ballot, and telling you what to do.

I don't know how you can't follow this (back atcha).

Where are 44,000 provisional ballots? Where are the phenomenal complaints?

Every state purges voter rolls. Even Democratic states! That's not evidence that Russians hacked the vote count. It may be evidence of a deliberate voter suppression. But that is not Russians.

[uponit7771]

104. +1

[Lee-Lee]

115. Except for two things

First, when you start messing with the voter rolls and people can’t vote when they show up- they don’t shut up and go away. They complain, loudly, and people notice.

See the 2016 NY primary where voters were actually purged as a great example.

Second, the DNC and state level parties download and analyze the latest voter registration databases weekly if not more often. The statistics nerds analyze every shift and change looking for any kind of trend or pattern. If there were thousands of people unexpectedly purged from the databases without explanation they would notice.

[robersl]

117. Read This

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2018/03/21/thousands-milwaukee-voters-have-been-dropped-rolls-including-some-erroneously/446022002/

[forthemiddle]

133. This would not have mattered in Wisconsin

Wisconsin has same day registration, so if for some nefarious reason you got removed from the poll book, you just simply reregistered, and you could vote.
I also worked both the polls, and was a witness at the recount ( which were done by hand)
, and our recount resulted in additional votes FOR Trump.

[triron]

142. Yes that's where most of the 'vote tampering' occurred.

Select people who cast ballots for HRC were not counted.

[TheFrenchRazor]

162. who says it can't be both? nt

[watoos]

168. Exactly

No machines were randomly pulled out and independently audited. It's pretty simple to cheat in the voting machine software, simply preprogram it.

We need to go to paper ballots, or voting by mail would even be better.

[delisen]

118. Georgia uses easily hackable Diebold machines with no paper trail

Recounts in Georgia are practically meaningless

Experts have pointed out for well over a decade that our touch screen machines cannot be trusted.Over that period of time many prominent Democrats have denied machines can be hacked. Unfortunately their opinions have been based upon willful ignorance. They do not have the technical expertise to to evaluate the machines and have over and over brushed off the the science.
They simply have not been willing to learn yet are all to ready to voice a feel-good opinion ----faith-based opinions.


A whole generation of Democrats have come of age since the 2000 election debacle-and many know very little about the hacked election and Supreme Ct decision that put George W. Bush in office and gave us the Iraq War plus the Bank disaster

an old article from Fortune magazine has a good chart on comparing vote count methods:

<http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/11/13/8393084/index.htm>

[yallerdawg]

121. There are a handful of states that use paperless systems.

Are these results being challenged?

We have had elections ongoing in every state using these same systems since 2016. I guess we liked those results?

Hanging chads in Florida and a 5-4 ruling? Not much to do with hacking. Those weren't Russians keeping people from voting.

[delisen]

172. Challenge is pointless-the machine recalculates

and get the same result.

You should inform yourself on the Georgia special congressional election held after the presidential election.

In Election 2000 it was American who kept people from voting and Americans who refused to do recounts, and Americans who made excuses for questionable results and for why exit polls suddenly failed to match votes.

If you remember Election 2000, you will remember that Vladimir Putin himself commented on the irregularities in the Florida vote.

I don't know why you would think that a "handful" of states are not important or that voter suppress is not important.

There is much scientific evidence available. You don't have to just write opinion without the facts. I trust that if you are sincere in your opinion, you will now set about informing yourself on the facts.

[Mariana]

10. Mcar has a good question.

How, exactly, are these voters supposed to divine that it was their votes that were changed or not counted?t

[yallerdawg]

16. I answered. Where's the evidence? It's been a while now.

Putin wants us to ask this question.

The Dotard wants us to ask this question - next time.

I'm through with this "your vote doesn't count" crap.

Evidence, please. Not speculation and innuendo.

[lark]

27. The evidence gathering was shut down!

WI had 9 districts that had more repug votes than voters registered and Scott Walker shut down the vote count. Heavily minority districts in urban Pa had the presidential undervotes at nearly double the rate of any other districts and the exact same thing happened in heavily Dem Broward County in FL. The evidence is there, the repugs just control the government and had all the counts shut down.

[yallerdawg]

37. There is evidence of what happened.

Voters were targeted with propaganda.

Voters were disillusioned by the Comey announcement.

Voters were soured on Hillary.

The Dotard/Sanders message of "the little people getting screwed" resonated in the Rust Belt (Sanders won Michigan and Wisconsin in the primary).

There IS evidence of what happened. Let's not do THIS again.

[forthemiddle]

134. No Wisconsin was recounted in full.

I witnessed the recount in my county, and I know that none of them were “shut down” by Walker.
As for having more voters than registered voters, that’s because you don’t have to register in advance in Wisconsin, you register at the polls when you vote the first time.

[lark]

140. Really?

I know they did some counties but seriously thought I read that it wasn't completed state wide.

[forthemiddle]

146. Nope it was complete with one day to spare

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updates-final-wisconsin-recount-tally-1481584948-htmlstory.html

Not only that, contrary to some of the posts on this thread, the vast majority of counties did full hand counts, not via the machine. Wisconsin also has same day registration, so even the hacking of the voter rolls didn’t affect voting.


Of the 72 Counties in Wisconsin -
47 counties: Recount by hand
13 counties: Combination of hand count and optical scanners
12 counties: Optical scanners.

In the end Trump gained votes to increase his lead.

I am in no way saying 2016 was legitimate across the board, but I do know Wisconsin was pretty clean.

[TheFrenchRazor]

163. recounted by hand or machine? i'm pretty certain that the entire state was not recounted by hand.

a machine "recount" is no recount at all.

[forthemiddle]

165. Here is the data

Of the 72 Counties in Wisconsin -
47 counties: Recount by hand
13 counties: Combination of hand count and optical scanners
12 counties: Optical scanners.

In the end Trump gained votes to increase his lead.

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2016/dec/09/sean-duffy/wisconsin-presidential-election-recount-only-dane-/

And the largest, and most Democratic county in the state, Milwaukee, was one that recounted by machine, so that wouldn’t have advantaged the Republicans.

[edhopper]

14. How would they know?

in MI it was only a 10,000 vote margin.

And it wasn't like there weren't irregularities.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016/12/18/detroit-ballots-vote-recount-election-stein/95570866/

And some voters have claimed their votes were switched by machines.

[yallerdawg]

20. Michigan - paper ballots.

Your link points out these "discrepancies" weren't enough to impact the final results.

We can't trust voting machines. We can't trust voting counts.

We can't trust the people.

Putin wins.

[tomp]

83. You feel confidant in the election count in 2016?

There are myriad ways elections can be swung involving every link in the chain from registration to final tally and on to recounts and court cases. Since 2000 this has been painfully clear. Perhaps more painful for you than keeping your head in the sand all these years.

[yallerdawg]

102. You know what wil change election counts?

Democrats showing up and voting.

I'd need to see evidence that Russians hacked our voting totals and changed those results.

[tomp]

147. IF there is hacking of voting happening...

...it really doesn’t matter how many people show up.

I’m all for big turnout, but voting machines have been demonstrated to be hackable, and it doesn’t have to be Russians. Local shenanigans will do just fine.

[yallerdawg]

148. Most states and many more locations have paper trails.

"Hacks" leave a trail (see Russian indictments).

"Hackable" means nothing without evidence that elections have been hacked.

We have evidence of a lot of shenanigans - we don't need the imaginary.

[tomp]

150. I'm not certain that all hacks leave a trail.

If you are a very high level expert on hacking and you assert that there is always a trail, I would have to accept that at some level. If you’re not you’re talking through your hat.

Also, you seem absolutely certain that adequate investigation has been conducted regarding hacking. You’d have to go a long way to convince me of that.

As I understand it, exit polls did not match final tallies in some cases in recent elections. That meets the gold standard for a vote count problem

[yallerdawg]

151. Is your argument that our elections are actually meaningless?

Or that we should never, ever stop whining when we lose?

Every argument here is a year and a half older now.

Evidence - not conjecture, speculation, innuendo! WE are THAT party, right?

[tomp]

152. Wow, that's way to much assumption for me!

It’s also insulting to categorize concern for voting integrity as whining. I can’t even understand the meaning of that middle sentence.

Just too tedious for me. Believe what you want. Goodbye.

[yallerdawg]

154. The thing I care about...

is getting people to understand each and every one of our votes counts and matters!

I get that you want to make sure no hanky-panky goes on when they get to the polling place. I get that.

I just don't agree that our biggest problem is something that would be irrelevant if we just showed up!

[TheFrenchRazor]

164. were those paper ballots ever counted entirely by hand? NO, but nevermind. nt

[MichMan]

74. Which resulted in overvotes for Hillary

This was due to incompetence by the Detroit election workers. Since Detroit is 95% Democratic, the only likely scenario is that Hillary received those extra votes, not Trump

[Meadowoak]

17. I lived in Detroit at the time, and 400 precincts could not be counted because the paper ballot scan

Ners were counting more votes than were cast. The republican governor stepped in and stopped any recount. The precincts were never counted. About 80,000 votes for Hillary were lost.

[yallerdawg]

22. Wouldn't that be news?

Come on.

[bearsfootball516]

29. Exactly.

If in an election as close as this, EIGHTY THOUSAND votes were just lost in a critical swing state, every network would be on it 24/7.

[Qutzupalotl]

34. It was.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2016/12/12/records-many-votes-detroits-precincts/95363314/

[yallerdawg]

41. How do they know that happened?

Oh. They tabulated the ballots against the machine counts.

I'm sure the Republicans in Detroit controlled THIS story. (If you can find any.)

[MichMan]

80. This statement was in the article you linked

"Under state law, those precincts could be recounted because there were explanations. The law states that original results stand in precincts that can’t be recounted."

If anything, this resulted in Hillary getting more votes, not less

[Qutzupalotl]

88. We don't know who the extra votes were for.

But Michigan law essentially states that discrepancies stand, which is fucked up.

[MichMan]

96. Since Detroit is 95% Dems and there were overvotes in those precincts........

Detroit is over 95% Democratic. It is illogical to think that extra votes from feeding ballots through twice would favor anyone but Hillary

From my understanding the state law dates back to the early 50's when there were a lot of allegation in a Governor's race that ballot boxes were tampered with etc. afterwards. Not a surprise that you wouldn't want to have a recount in precincts with irregularities. Unless you believe that unsecured ballot boxes and missing poll books should be counted after the fact; I don't, as there is a real possibility of mischief under those circumstances. How can anyone discern what the situation was at the time of the election vs. what might have later been meddled with?

The issue was that Detroit Election workers in those precincts were either sloppy or didn't follow the guidelines from their training. The city Elections Clerk, Janice Winfrey has admitted that the training wasn't adequate in many cases and has promised improvements

from the link below

"State law spells out a prescribed criteria for determining whether a precinct can be recounted. Workers first check to make sure the number of ballots on the seal of the container matches the ballots recorded by workers on Election Day.
“If the seal number matches, then we know it’s not been tampered with,” Rozell said.
If numbers don’t match, then workers can count all of the ballots in the precinct twice to see if there was an error made by workers on Election Night.

“If it does not match after the second count, then it’s not recountable,” Rozell said.
Entire precincts can be set aside in a recount if the ballots are stored in an unapproved container or if it isn’t properly sealed."

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2016/12/05/recount-unrecountable/95007392/

[MichMan]

77. The votes were not "lost'

Since they could not be recounted, the original recorded vote counts stood as originally counted.

Since there was overvotes and Detroit is 95% Democratic, this could only have favored Hillary, not Trump

[jimlup]

159. yes and this would have been more than enough

[triron]

161. Here come the naysayers.

[Meadowoak]

4. Detroit was 100% hacked!

[Meadowoak]

7. A major city that has reliably voted 97% Democrat for decades wasn't even counted!

[uponit7771]

9. I havent seen this, do you have a link Detroit votes not being counted like they were supposed to?

tia

[RandomAccess]

31. You could start here

MikeFarb @mikefarb1
#unhackthevote
Did Trump win Michigan? I don' think so.
Won by 10,704 but wait
75,355 Ballots Thrown Out
87 Machines Broke Down in Detrioit

Link to tweet

The thread is interesting.

and here's his website: https://www.unhackthevote.com/

where this article https://www.unhackthevote.com/our-research/cambridge-analytica-and-the-flipping-of-an-election-the-law-of-small-numbers/

links to this Time magazine article: http://time.com/4599886/detroit-voting-machine-failures-were-widespread-on-election-day/

[uponit7771]

57. Fuckin wow !!!

[Meadowoak]

64. Thank you for those links.

[mythology]

26. Citation needed

There is no evidence of this.

[Meadowoak]

66. See post #31 I was unable to link it from my phone.

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

6. Seems i remember the next day

that officials up in MI said several Detroit Precincts were shut down, not counted, or showed extreme irregularities, that were never addressed or recounted bc they were stopped. But why? That state alone is where a lot of the "Hinky Happened". I think.
i agree. ignoring any problem rarely solves it. Which makes me real jumpy about the 2018 elections...are they dragging their feet on purpose? Has DHS gone state to state, city by city, county by county to check the software and machines themselves? they were hacked by kids at a convention in literally minutes. What exactly does Homeland Security do? I've not seen too many of them before congress justifying their continued existence.
How long has Russia been involved in this? And the gop? Seems HOmeland Security is a redundancy of an already redundant over policed system. DHS increased the size of govt over 15% in one fell swoop. We know how these military type budgets seem to go as well...Ever bigger and expensive. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan is over in all but name only. The institutions we set in place in a 'terrorist behind every corner world' of GWB, has passed, and it's time to go back to a peacetime economy and system I'd posit. that's just me...while we're discussing abolishing ICE and we see how TSA has grown out of control as well.
Just an aside about TSA...I'd like to see how many true blue bombers etc they really stopped. Imho...if im on a plane that blows up...then thats the cost of freedom in America and the rest of the 340 million of us shouldnt suffer any more than those who died. There's a cost to liberty. We need to be ready to pay it to have peace of mind and privacy again. Flying has become too cumbersome.

[3catwoman3]

15. Was there not something about a ridiculously large number...

...of ballots from Detroit that had down ticket choices marked but had not voted for president? Very suspicious.

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

30. Very much so.

Why stop a vote recount? Who does that shit in a DEMOCRACY? Voting is in us by now on a molecular level it seems.
That's our system. it works. That's why we are NUMBER 1. Bc our govt worked. And the people played their role. And stuff functions very well. Or it did under Pres Obama.
The idea that an illegitimate treasonous cabal would get away with the obvious dismantling of our Govt and Union...is really maddening.
it's going to take a lot of healing for folks to start loving each other again. Just a naked observation on my part.

[uponit7771]

8. THANK YOU !!! They're asking people to believe in The Magic Bullet Theory !! Bank Robbers set out

... to rob a bank, broke into a couple of banks and decided not to take any money.

Yeah, right !!!

The voter roles were the easiest upstream process to target and effect down stream flow

[Awsi Dooger]

144. I feel sorry for anyone who doesn't believe in the Magic Bullet Theory

That type is destined to go through life butchering one simple evaluation after another.

This after-the-fact 2016 analysis conveniently ignored all of the close states that went to Hillary, like New Hampshire, Nevada and Minnesota. I guess that was just guaranteed to happen, and nothing the Russians could do about it, so they left those alone. Heck, we've got plenty already.

Suppression and the social media attacks were the successful cheats, along with such an unprecedented number of blatant lies by the candidate. Nobody was familiar with 40% lies during a campaign, let alone 72%, so the media couldn't deal with it sufficiently, nor the voters. Trump understood the immense value in that, since he's specialized in it all his life. He used the Roy Cohn approach and no doubt will take it to greater extreme as an incumbent in 2020.

[shanny]

11. You know the pukes had already laid the groundwork

FOR YEARS with gerrymandering, voter suppression, vote caging, the new Jim Crow...and we did fuck all about it. Without all that, Clinton would have won in a walk, with or without Russia, third-party candidates or Susan Sarandon and her three followers.

We need nationwide standards, a revamped and fair method for drawing districts, automatic registration, vote by mail, instant runoff voting, etc etc etc and a way to deal with the effing Electoral College. A liberal think tank should have a voting rights package ready to go on day 1 in 2020; I can't believe we don't have one already.

[mythology]

18. Your theory falls apart when you realize it's working backwards

For your theory to be true, Russia would have needed to know the exact vote totals before the election. Otherwise how would they know how many to change.

Also as a reminder, Wisconsin did a recount. Some were counted by hand. Those showed no difference compared to machine counts. Your theory would then require Russia know which counties would be hand recounted.

There is zero evidence of vote hacking.

[edhopper]

23. Some by hand

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/28/new-evidence-finds-anomalies-in-wisconsin-vote-but-no-conclusive-evidence-of-fraud/?utm_term=.f32183c1349f

The Russians goal was disruption. But they had co-conspirators.

But nothing to see here, move along, right?

[lostnfound]

24. You thought you had around $28:000 in checking but turns out only $22,000...

For six random months there’s no paper trail, but you inspected the record for the other six months and they were okay, so there’s NO EVIDENCE of theft.

[ck4829]

25. What was that thing that Rummy said, something about the absence of evidence

Not being the evidence of absence.

I think we can retract that statement when Rumsfeld is in the Hague, until then, maybe we should use it too.

I think this is why the fascists are spinning circles around us, we have all these procedures and rules, and they just go.

[robersl]

69. Yes, but....

in Wisconsin, each county clerk got to choose whether or not to do a hand recount or just run the ballots through the machines again. And, of course, the Democratic counties all recounted by hand, and the Republican counties all reran the machine counts, so the Wisconsin recount is essentially useless as evidence of validity.

[uponit7771]

106. +1

[forthemiddle]

135. Actually, Milwaukee one of the two largest Dem Counties

Recounted by machine, Madison did it by hand.

Of the 72 Counties in Wisconsin -
47 counties: Recount by hand
13 counties: Combination of hand count and optical scanners
12 counties: Optical scanners.

In the end Trump gained votes to increase his lead.

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2016/dec/09/sean-duffy/wisconsin-presidential-election-recount-only-dane-/

[ck4829]

21. K&R

[WhiteTara]

28. I think they flipped votes in other states

She should have won a few that shocked me, besides the 3.

[RandomAccess]

33. Here's some info

PALMER: Rigged election: Donald Trump won every surprise swing state by the same 1% margin
http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/rigged-election-donald-trump-won-every-surprise-swing-state-by-the-same-1-margin/118/

The most commonly posited explanation of Donald Trump’s shocking election victory was that every professional pollster in the nation – despite each working independently and using differing methodologies – somehow managed to overlook the same pockets of Trump voters in these states. If such pockets did exist, they would have existed in varying sizes in each of the four states, thus resulting in different sized wins in each.

Ask any statistician and they’ll tell you that a reasonable distribution of the results would have been Trump winning one of the states by one percent, won one of them by perhaps three percent, won one of them by two percent, lost one of them by one percent, or something along those lines. But instead the voting tallies looked startlingly different from any natural distribution. In fact they looked startlingly the same.

According to the New York Times, the voting results broke down like this: Trump won Florida by just over one percent of the vote. He also won Pennsylvania by just over one percent. He won Michigan by just under one percent. And he won Wisconsin by precisely one percent. That’s not how numbers tend to work in the real world.

On its own, this kind of suspiciously consistent numerical dispersion across the four states that decided the election would be something that could be written off as a mere fluke. But when you put it within the context of the numerous other ways in which the voting tallies make no mathematical sense, it points to the numbers having been rigged or altered.

[WhiteTara]

36. Our country has been stolen.

We are so under siege that I don't know if we can recover in time to save democracy. Maybe it's supposed to die, but it sure looks like it's being killed.

[RandomAccess]

38. I know

I sometimes feel the same way. But we MUST work to fix this. If I ever give up hope, life wouldn't be wort living.

[WhiteTara]

53. Of course we must. As long as sentient beings remain

on this earth, it really is our duty to fight tyranny. But skillfully.

[MichMan]

126. Your proof is the Palmer Report?

One of the most widely discredited "news" sources that there is

[RandomAccess]

35. A damn lot of Dems also think raising the question

"suppresses the vote."

I say that's a myth probably from the voting machine manufacturers or their own deranged thinking. I've never seen any indication it's true. It's certainly not true for me.

But I can tell you what it DOES suppress: getting involved in finding out what's going on and FIXING it. And -- at that point you have to ask that magic question: cui bono?

[yallerdawg]

44. We constantly have elections with 10, 20, 30% turnout across the nation.

National presidential elections have 30-40% of registered voters sitting at home?

The number of voters who sit out elections could turn the results of every one of them!

Something IS suppressing the vote, and the most common answer - my vote doesn't matter/"count."

Saying our votes don't "count" would seem to confirm the belief of the non-voters.

[RandomAccess]

75. They're not complaining about the machines

but about the much larger question of responsiveness of elected officials to their constituents. I have the same complaint.

[beachbum bob]

39. no evidence of votes being "flipped", the attacks were to breed dissention and apathy among

Democrats which was highly successful to reduce turnout overall and increase votes for Jill Stein

if anything steered the election wrong it was Jill Stein

[edhopper]

47. Yes that happened

and also lead to the Don "victory"

But we are hearing more and more evidence of the districts being hacked.

To not consider this is willful blindness.

[ck4829]

51. +1

[marlakay]

48. this is exactly why

most of America doesn't vote at all. They don't trust the system to work.

[Captain Stern]

50. I don't think any votes were flipped at all.

There's just no evidence of it. And "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence" doesn't really get us anywhere.....because that also means there's no proof that we didn't flip any votes, like plenty of right-wingers believe about other elections.

I can see why people want to believe that votes were flipped....hell, I wish that votes had been flipped. But the reality is, we just plain, fucking, lost, when we shouldn't have. We underestimated how many gullible rubes that there are in this country that will pretty much believe anything that they read on the internet. That's why the Russian propaganda worked.

If votes really were flipped, then we have a bigger problem than just republicans being cheaters. It would mean that plenty of our team is just fine with it. None of our leaders have said the votes were flipped. It would mean Obama is in on it. It would mean the Clintons are in on it. It would mean Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Maxine Waters are all in on it as well. And, if that's the case then we are fucked so bad that it really isn't even worth bothering to vote at all.

[pnwmom]

56. There really is no important difference between flipping a vote

and messing with the election registration systems -- which we know happened - to prevent a voter from getting a ballot in the first place.

And THAT everyone does acknowledge happened. So the Russians might not have flipped individual votes -- but that doesn't mean they didn't "flip" the election or the overall results in whole states. And that includes Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina,Illinois and any state that had its registration system broken into.

[edhopper]

58. K&R!

[Captain Stern]

60. Where are the thousands of people complaining?

Where are those tens of thousands people that showed up to vote, that were denied the opportunity?

Where are all of our leaders that are pointing out how thousands, and thousands, of our voters were turned away? Are they in on it?

I live in North Carolina. There hasn't been a single report in the media here about anyone showing up to vote, and being told they weren't registered.

I suppose all of those people could have just decided that it wasn't worth complaining about. I guess thousands of people actually could be complaining about it, and the media is refusing to report it.

Or....maybe that just didn't happen.

[pnwmom]

87. "I live in North Carolina. There hasn't been a single report in the media

here about anyone showing up to vote, and being told they weren't registered." Charlotte is a city in your state, is it not? And the Charlotte Observer is one of your papers?

Many outlets in the MSM across the country reported widespread problems with people voting in North Carolina. That's why even I, way out here in the state of Washington, had heard about it. The 3 below are just examples. I could have given you many more.


There were widespread problems, according to this article.

http://www.businessinsider.com/north-carolina-voting-problems-2016-11

Meanwhile, across the state, reports of missing registrations were filed by voters who said they tried to register through the Department of Motor Vehicles.

The problem arose on the first day of early voting, when the names of some voters who tried to register through the DMV didn't appear on voter rolls. A federal judge ordered state election officials to count provisional ballots from those voters, but on Tuesday, apparently not everyone was offered a ballot.

There were also reports of "software glitches." Some people hung around and were finally able to vote. Others gave up.

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article113248708.html

The N.C. Board of Elections Tuesday night extended voting in eight Durham County precincts for 20 to 60 minutes – short of the time requested by the local board – after software glitches interrupted voting there earlier in the day.

Two of the eight were allowed to stay open an hour longer than planned, but Durham County’s board had unanimously asked the state for permission to extend voting by 90 minutes in all eight precincts. In one precinct, voting had stopped for two hours; in others, down-time ranged from 20 to 45 minutes, elections officials reported.

During a special meeting that ended just a half hour before most polls closed, state board chair Grant Whitney Jr. said he didn’t agree with taking a “one-shot approach” to extend time for all precincts equally. “We’re kind of running out of time here,” he said, encouraging the board to find a compromise “without doing this into the middle of the night.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/us/politics/russia-election-hacking.html

The calls started flooding in from hundreds of irate North Carolina voters just after 7 a.m. on Election Day last November.

Dozens were told they were ineligible to vote and were turned away at the polls, even when they displayed current registration cards. Others were sent from one polling place to another, only to be rejected. Scores of voters were incorrectly told they had cast ballots days earlier. In one precinct, voting halted for two hours.

Susan Greenhalgh, a troubleshooter at a nonpartisan election monitoring group, was alarmed. Most of the complaints came from Durham, a blue-leaning county in a swing state. The problems involved electronic poll books — tablets and laptops, loaded with check-in software, that have increasingly replaced the thick binders of paper used to verify voters’ identities and registration status. She knew that the company that provided Durham’s software, VR Systems, had been penetrated by Russian hackers months before.

“It felt like tampering, or some kind of cyberattack,” Ms. Greenhalgh said about the voting troubles in Durham.

[Captain Stern]

94. Those links are informative

But, they don't really dispute my point.

Some people that registered through DMV weren't put on the rolls. This was noticed the very first day of early voting, and those folks got provisional ballots.

The second link has to do with the shady closings of polling places while people are still in line.

There just isn't evidence of masses amount of registered voters being told on election day that they weren't registered.

[pnwmom]

98. You're moving the goalposts. You said there wasn't a single report of people

not being able to vote because of registration problems. That's what those "software glitches" were about -- people whose names weren't showing up on the registration lists.

And here's another article you missed:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2016/live-updates/general-election/real-time-updates-on-the-2016-election-voting-and-race-results/missing-voter-registrations-reported-in-north-carolina/?utm_term=.12dc15ec909a

Reports of missing registrations in North Carolina are coming into the Election Protection hotline from voters who tried to register through the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

Allison Riggs, senior attorney with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, said the reports are coming in from throughout the state, but for now it is hard to judge the exact number. “It could be thousands, but probably not tens of thousands,” she said.

After a federal court order on the first day of early voting, the state Board of Elections issued new paperwork to allow voters who tried to register through the DMV to use provisional ballots. Riggs said that should help protect the ballots — but not if voters are turned away or not offered the new forms.

“It’s seeming to us that some poll workers are not up to speed on that,” Riggs said. Some voters, she said, aren’t getting the new forms.

[Captain Stern]

137. Well, no, that isn't exactly what I said

I didn't say that there were no reports of people not being able to vote because of registration problems.

I said: "There hasn't been a single report in the media here about anyone showing up to vote, and being told they weren't registered."

That was evidently incorrect, but certainly not to a degree to invalidate my point.

The lady in your link is quoted as saying (on the day of the election) “It could be thousands, but probably not tens of thousands,” Yeah.....it could be thousands. That's some rock solid proof, right there. It also could be just five.

From an article in the Raleigh paper borrowed from the NY Times (almost a year later)

"Dozens were told they were ineligible to vote and were turned away at the polls, even when they displayed current registration cards."

Read more here: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article170738482.html#storylink=cpy

Again, there's simply no evidence that tens of thousands of would be Clinton voters were turned away at the polls in a state that trump won by over 150,000 votes.

[pnwmom]

139. Again.

I said: "There hasn't been a single report in the media here about anyone showing up to vote, and being told they weren't registered."

Your original statement was clearly wrong and many MSM outlets show that -- to a degree that invalidates your point.

“It could be thousands, but probably not tens of thousands."

You didn't say you were looking for "rock solid proof" of "thousands." The newspaper's report of this woman's account, based on her knowledge at the time, certainly qualifies as a "report."

What we know, based on conventional MSM sources, is there was chaos in election activities "across the state," but the worst in heavily Democratic Durham. We'll never know how many people gave up standing in line while systems were down; how many were handed a provisional ballot and came back on another day with enough information to get accepted; how many were handed a provisional ballot and never followed up; and how many weren't even given the option of a provisional ballot. On the basis of this lack of certainty, because of NC's own chaos that night, you want to believe nothing really happened.

But anyone who was watching TV on election night, except for you, apparently, was aware that North Carolina stood out among the states that was having voting problems, and Durham in particular.

And here's yet another of those non-existent reports -- this one from September almost a year later. Federal and state officials are avoiding investigating security problems involved in the software. The State of North Carolina is keeping confidential the report it commissioned, mostly based on interviews with poll workers, on the problems in Durham.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/us/politics/russia-election-hacking.html

Intelligence officials in January reassured Americans that there was no indication that Russian hackers had altered the vote count on Election Day, the bottom-line outcome. But the assurances stopped there.

Government officials said that they intentionally did not address the security of the back-end election systems, whose disruption could prevent voters from even casting ballots.

SNIP

In Durham, a local firm with limited digital forensics or software engineering expertise produced a confidential report, much of it involving interviews with poll workers, on the county’s election problems. The report was obtained by The Times, and election technology specialists who reviewed it at the Times’ request said the firm had not conducted any malware analysis or checked to see if any of the e-poll book software was altered, adding that the report produced more questions than answers.

Neither VR Systems — which operates in seven states beyond North Carolina — nor local officials were warned before Election Day that Russian hackers could have compromised their software. After problems arose, Durham County rebuffed help from the Department of Homeland Security and Free & Fair, a team of digital election-forensics experts who volunteered to conduct a free autopsy. The same was true elsewhere across the country.

SNIP

While only a fraction of voters were turned away because of the e-poll book difficulties — more than half of the county cast their ballots days earlier — plenty of others were affected when the state mandated that the entire county revert to paper rolls on Election Day. People steamed as everything slowed. Voters gave up and left polling places in droves — there’s no way of knowing the numbers, but they include more than a hundred North Carolina Central University students facing four-hour delays.

SNIP

Her account of the troubles matches complaints logged in the Election Incident Reporting System, a tracking tool created by nonprofit groups. As the problems mounted, The Charlotte Observer reported that Durham’s e-poll book vendor was Florida-based VR Systems, which Ms. Greenhalgh knew from a CNN report had been hacked earlier by Russians. “Chills went through my spine,” she recalled.

[Captain Stern]

141. I already said my statement was incorrect.

I'm not sure why you're so hung up on that statement. I guess you missed the part where I said it was evidently incorrect.

Also, I haven't said "that I want to believe nothing really happened"....but, I think you already know that. And I never said there were no voting problems in North Carolina.....and I'm pretty sure you know that too.

It's a good thing I haven't asked for rock solid proof of anything, because I haven't gotten any.

I asked where the thousands of angry people were that supposedly were told they weren't registered when they showed up to vote. I asked that because that is exactly what would have happened if the Russians had erased thousands of names from our voter rolls.

It simply didn't happen.

[pnwmom]

145. You said it was "evidently incorrect" but that that didn't invalidate your point.

Of course being incorrect DOES invalidate your point.

You can't logically say, based on the MSM reports, that it "simply didn't happen" that thousands of angry people found out they weren't registered. The poll observer said it could have been thousands who were in that situation.

The TRUTH is there were lots of reported problems and we will NEVER KNOW how many were denied the right to vote, because your state decided not to investigate it or to examine the computer systems.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2016/live-updates/general-election/real-time-updates-on-the-2016-election-voting-and-race-results/missing-voter-registrations-reported-in-north-carolina/?utm_term=.12dc15ec909a

Reports of missing registrations in North Carolina are coming into the Election Protection hotline from voters who tried to register through the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

Allison Riggs, senior attorney with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, said the reports are coming in from throughout the state, but for now it is hard to judge the exact number. “It could be thousands, but probably not tens of thousands,” she said.

[Captain Stern]

149. No, being incorrect on a detail doesn't invalidate my point at all.

I did indeed say that my statement about there being no reports in the media here about registered voters showing up to vote, and being told that they weren't registered was 'evidently incorrect'. But, no, being incorrect about a detail, doesn't invalidate my point at all.

The article that you posted where Allison Riggs says "It could be thousands, but probably not tens of thousands" was written before noon on the day of the election. You also call her a poll observer...I guess that makes anybody that observes any polls, from any place, by any means, a poll observer. So, you and I are both poll observers also.

The article that I posted, that was written almost a year later, says there were dozens, not thousands.

In any case, it seems to me that you are lumping all of the voting problems that exist into one big group. My state, and our country definitely has some big problems with our voting system, but that's not what this thread is about. It's about what the Russians did, or didn't do, and that's what I've been commenting on.

[pnwmom]

153. "Poll observer" was shorthand, sorry. She was a Senior Attorney with the Southern Coalition

for Social Justice, and she was discussing the reports that she was seeing from all over the state.

Allison Riggs, senior attorney with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, said the reports are coming in from throughout the state, but for now it is hard to judge the exact number. “It could be thousands, but probably not tens of thousands,” she said.

[Captain Stern]

160. Yes, she was talking about the reports she was seeing.

I don't think, for a second, that she was intentionally lying.

She said: "It could be thousands, but probably not tens of thousands,” She said that on the morning of the election. At that time, she genuinely thought there COULD be thousands. I think that she genuinely believed what she said at the time, and I don't fault her at all for saying it..

But now, we have the benefit of hindsight, and we know there weren't thousands at all.

All that aside, here's an article I found about Allison Riggs:

[link:http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2018/04/25/a-familiar-face-in-dc-rising-scsj-voting-rights-attorney-argues-first-case-at-scotus/|

Regardless of what anyone reading this thread believes about the extent of Russian interference in our election, I think that we can all agree that Allison Riggs is pretty impressive. I hope we hear her name far more in the future.

[edhopper]

61. You mean like not contesting the 2000 vote

which turns out that Gore won.

But not disrupt and question the system blah, blah blah....

[Captain Stern]

71. I guess Gore didn't really want to win any way.

From what I've read, it sounds like Gore would have won the Presidency in 2000 if there had been a statewide recount of all disputed ballots. However......Gore didn't ask for one. He only asked for recounts in four counties. He most likely still would have lost if only those counties were recounted. Also, the recount that was ordered by Florida's Supreme Court was only counting the ballots where a machine couldn't detect a vote for a candidate at all...not all disputed ballots. So, Gore probably would have lost on that recount also.

Bottom line....in 2000 more people in Florida probably voted for Gore than Bush, but Bush won. If it really was part of a conspiracy, then it sounds like Gore was in on it as well.

[edhopper]

81. Then you don't remeber

the Dems in Congress wanting to "move on" and not question the system.

[rzemanfl]

107. Gore lost because the Repukes scared the Dems from disputing military ballots.

They did that by waving the flag. A person in the armed forces has no more right to vote the next day or ignore the rules than I do.

[debsy]

52. Many of us have been saying this since immediately after the election turned out the way it did.

It was so blatantly obvious to me, and others, that the election had once again been stolen, yet we just proceeded on with the inauguration and normalizing the shit-head traitor in chief.

[dem in texas]

54. Get Rid of the Electoral College.

What has happened shows how easy it is to rig or manipulate the Electoral College vote. It's time for this system to go. Let the popular vote decide.

Doesn't make sense for Hillary to win the popular votes by 3 Million, then lose the election by 80,000 votes in the Electoral College. Same thing happened in Gore VS Bush. Gore won the popular vote by 150,000, but Bush won because of Supreme court gave Electoral count to Bush.

[Lee-Lee]

55. Ok, how?

Voting machines do not hook to the internet.

So to hack them you either need to change the software/firmware inside them in order to make them miscount votes, or else you need to change the results stored in the memory between when the election starts and when the memory cards are read.

To do the first would require the hacker to break into the place they are stored, take the machine out of storage, either open it and swap phucoal compnents in the form of drives or chips or power the machine up, hook up another computer, download new software. Then power it back down, put it back in storage, and leave.

Without getting caught.

And to successfully change the results of an election that would have to be done to thousands of machines in hundred of precincts/counties.

And done thousands of times absolutely 100% perfectly without leaving any trace that is detected later, to include being able to avoid disturbing anti-tamper seals, all security systems, etc.

That’s the stuff of movies, not reality.

The other option is they messed with the memory on machines. That means they have to access the memory cards or chips between when the polls close and when the votes are counted. But that entire time they are under seal and poll observers from both parties are transporting them together. They can’t hack the cards earlier because they won’t know how many people will vote in thy polling place, so they couldn’t make the totals add up. They would have to change votes after the polls close. And once again, evading all detection and doing it to thousands of machines.

So far nobody has told me how the Russians could pull that off thousand sof times to thousands of machines in hundreds of locations without anyone catching on to anything.

[edhopper]

62. Well

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/magazine/the-myth-of-the-hacker-proof-voting-machine.html

https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/26/voting-machine-makers-are-already-worried-about-defcon/

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/344488-hackers-break-into-voting-machines-in-minutes-at-hacking-competition

and on and on...

[Lee-Lee]

84. Ok for those- none show how

The first discusses not the machines, but the computer used to tabulate totals.

That could be hacked- but if it were it would quickly be detected.

Each machines total is recorded separately before being fed into the computer discussed there that adds totals. Well, smart observers from both parties are watching this and recording every number. If the numbers the machines gave out didn’t add up to what the software in the central tabulating computer said was the result it would obvious.

For this hack to work it would mean not one single Democratic poll watcher/election observer in any of the hundreds of counties that would have to be hacked to flip the results would have noticed the obvious discrepancy. Do you think that’s a realistic or likely way things happened?

On the second and third, both of those talk about them gaining physical access to the machines. So for that to be viable once again hackers would have to have had to be able to surreptitiously gaining enough access to thousands of machines, in hundreds of difference government facilities, and altered them and maintained 100% undetected. That is, once again, the stuff of Hollywood and not realistic.

[robersl]

63. Here's How

As Malcolm Nance pointed out, there are two ways to change the vote total - by addition or subtraction.

It wasn't that the Russians ADDED votes for Trump, but that they SUBTRACTED Hillary votes. How?

By attacking voter registration databases. As Nance said, all you have to do is change the zip codes of a few thousand voters (in primarily Democratic precincts) to make those voters ineligible on Election Day, and voila, you have changed the outcome.

And we know that the Russians were going after voter registration databases, so the likelihood of this being their modus operandi is pretty high.

[Lee-Lee]

89. And that's a more realistic possibility and fear

I think we would have noticed if tens of thousands of voters in those states who were properly registered were suddenly disenfranchised, and backups of databases make it easy to check and see if it was done, so I don’t think it was in this case.

A bigger fear of mine is if they corrupt the databases right on the eve of an election. What kind of chaos would that cause, and what kind of loss of confidence? If states can’t be sure they have accurate rolls on Election Day what do we do?

[edhopper]

91. And we know the Russians hacked

the databases.

A little registration hacking here, a little voter suppression there, how long before we get to 80,000?

[robersl]

99. But We Did Notice

Trump won Wisconsin by 27,000 votes. The vote total in Milwaukee County alone was down by over 50,000 votes from 2012. The counties in Wisconsin with the greatest decreases from 2012 are almost all Democratic counties.

You might have a point about being able to detect nefarious activity in the databases by checking against backups, but I am not aware of anyone making the effort to do that checking. Are you?

[Lee-Lee]

110. If 50,000 or 27,000 registered voters showed up and were turned away

I think we would have heard a whole, whole lot about it. People would be raising hell. Remember what happened when people were purged in the 2016 NY primary? People raised hell and it was definitely noticed.

The voter registration rolls in most states are public record, and the parties both download the latest versions weekly to keep up to date on registration trends. I would hope the DNC and state level parties would both notice if Democratic registration was suddenly and unexplainably dropping by tens of thousands. It would definitely show up in the analysis the data people do for the party.

I don’t think you could affect the outcome by purging voters with nobody noticing.

But if you can corrupt the databases and prevent states from having accurate rolls in time for the election you can cause all kinds of people to lose faith in the election no matter what the outcome ends up being.

[robersl]

116. I Think You Are Missing The Point

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2018/03/21/thousands-milwaukee-voters-have-been-dropped-rolls-including-some-erroneously/446022002/

The above link is a Milwaukee Journal story about the 44,000 voters who were dropped from the rolls in Milwaukee alone.

The point you are missing is that, if I change several thousand zip codes, how will you know? You can download the registration data and look at it all day, but unless you start cross-checking addresses to zip codes, you will not see anything suspicious.

No need to drop any voters from the rolls, just corrupt the data. Then, on election day, my name is still on the roll, but I'm registered in a precinct somewhere else in the state, and I can't vote at the polling place I show up at.

[forthemiddle]

136. They would not have been turned away!

In Wisconsin, we have same day registration, so if you get to the polls, and you’re not on the list you just reregister!
Poll book purges just did not make a difference in Wisconsin!

[Mister Ed]

112. Central tabulators

In an to attempt to alter vote counts, there would be no need to physically access thousands and thousands of individual voting machines in hundreds of precinct polling places, as you suggest. There's a single point of vulnerability, and that's the central tabulator, which tallies the totals reported by all of those precincts.

That sort of a hack would be revealed in a statewide recount, like the ones we had here in Minnesota in 2008 and 2010. Every single ballot was taken out of storage and counted, in full view of the public, the press, the campaigns, and their attorneys.

Such recounts are a good thing. If the recount totals jibe with the reported totals from election night, then public confidence in the system is bolstered. If they were to actually reveal cheating, then that's even more important. It's a shame that recount attempts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania in 2016 were shut down by Republicans in those state governments. What did they have to lose, or to hide, in a recount?

Of course, recounts are only possible in a state like mine, that uses physical ballots. There are still many states that use no physical ballot at all. Nothing. None, zip, nada. The count is whatever the electronic system says it is. Ask again, it'll tell you the same.

If the systems have been programmed to report the vote accurately, then, barring errors, they'll do just that. If they've been programmed to report one non-vote for Candidate X for every thousand she receives, then they will do exactly that.

But who would do such a thing? Well, no one - we hope. But if the company that provides the voting machines wants to do it, they damn well can, and we'll never know. Their software and firmware are "proprietary trade secret", and by law, no audit is allowed. Imagine depositing cash in an ATM that provides no receipt, and whose bank is shielded by law from any scrutiny. Not exactly confidence-inspiring.

Of course, the fact that these sorts of things could have happened in 2016 does not by any means prove that they did. However, I do not kid myself that our Russian friends and their American cohorts have any scruples against such skulduggery. To those who say that such questions should not be raised for fear of undermining voter confidence, I say that the way to strengthen and maintain voter confidence is to address the sorts of vulnerabilities I've outlined above.

[Lee-Lee]

114. No. That would be spotted immediately

Have you ever been part of an election at the county or state level?

There are observers everywhere. From both parties and from local/state government.

They write down every number reported from every precinct and they do their own math.

If what the county reported up as totals didn’t match what they had from adding up precinct totals, they immediately speak up. If the state level ones didn’t match totals for what every county reported, people would speak up.

This isn’t some deal where they call out a number from a precinct, it goes in a computer and there isn’t any record. All these numbers are tracked to the lowest level by not just elections officials but by people from our party trained and trusted to make sure the data is accurate.

The idea that one computer along the way could change totals mid stream and nobody would notice is fantasy. These numbers are checked and double checked and audited before elections are certified. And you can go look at the results down to the precinct level in the records, it’s public record, and do the math yourself to see if the numbers add up if you don’t trust the system and the people who check it for the Democratic Party.

[Mister Ed]

124. I have indeed been part of an election at the county or state level.

I've served as an election judge in every election year since 2006.

Here in Minnesota, audits are required on a small percentage of precincts, randomly chosen. That's a good safeguard against manipulation of central tabulators, since would-be evildoers would not know which precincts would be chosen for audit. I'd like to see a larger percentage of precincts audited every election, to make a good safeguard even better.

My point was not that manipulation of central tabulators would be easy-peasy, and would pass unnoticed. As you say, that's simply not the case (except perhaps in the states with the all-electronic touch-screen voting systems). My point was that an attack on the election system would almost certainly not involve a small army of hackers physically accessing thousands of individual voting machines, as you originally posited.

[Ilsa]

59. And that is only a few votes per precinct, I bet.

I don't know how many precincts there are in total for MI, WI, and PA. But if there are 10,000 precincts (I can't find actual number for each state) spread across those three states, only four or five votes need to be flipped in each precinct.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

65. I wouldn't blame the press. Every Dem I heard always

Qualified what they said..."not saying the outcome would have changed...". Knew that was a very bad move..mostly because no one knew...if it did or not...still don't.

[joanbarnes]

67. ...like I been saying since 11/16....

[gulliver]

68. I wish the Dems would just come out and say the election was probably stolen.

That's what the Republicans would do if the situation were reversed, except they would leave out the word "probably."

[LiberalLovinLug]

93. And face it, they'd already be screaming day and night if situations were reversed

And it was the Democrats that Putin had helped to win. Which would never happen of course.
But they would be using the 'treason' word on a daily basis.

[gulliver]

111. Yep

[LonePirate]

79. That's partly true. They also had to be confident of Repub wins in FL and NC.

Clinton reportedly was looking strong in the early voting in both states prior to Election Day. She wins if she carries those two states.

[HockeyMom]

82. I was living in Florida in 2016

Moved there in 2007. After a local election that year, I decided to never again vote at the polls and on a touch screen machine, especially for an important Presidential Election. I did not trust Florida Elections.

In 2008, 2012, and 2016 Presidential Elections I voted by Absentee Ballot and drove to my County Elections Board and handed my ballot to the clerk. I saw the clerks put my ballot in a big bin.

A human being had to first check the signatures on the envelop. Then the envelop had to be opened, again by a human, and the ballot's filled in box read, and tabulated.

Was I being naive for doing this, or considering paper ballots to be safer than voting on Electronic Touch Screen Machines? Sanders supporter who did switch and voted for Hillary in 2016.

[IronLionZion]

95. GOP know, they were counting on it

that's how they stole a supreme court seat and not got another one with a crooked deal.

If the integrity of our voting system is ever investigated, are their new judges going to rule on it?

The American government system can handle one idiot president, but not when all 3 branches are compromised and corrupted.

[Fiendish Thingy]

100. If it works to sell "designer sunglasses" , or convince RWNJ's that Pizzagate is true,

Why couldnt the same tactics, micro targeted by Cambridge Analytica, effect this small number of voters, either to flip, vote third party, or stay home.

It's the clearest explanation, unspoken by the MSM.

[world wide wally]

166. How many pet rocks did they sell?

[Fiendish Thingy]

171. Millions. I still have one in the original box. Nt

[rainin]

101. It is my belief that the low level actors who participated in this have already

cooperated with Mueller. Without support at the state level, it will be impossible to pull this off again. The question is, how protected do the Americans in these states believe themselves to be?

[KPN]

103. "The problem is ignoring that the integrity has already been compromised."

BINGO!!!!!

[Hoyt]

109. No votes needed to be flipped -- Comey, Russian and trump lies, emails, damage from Dem primary,

sore losers from Democratic primary, third party candidates, irrational "protest" votes, folks who thought Clinton had it and didn't vote (even with local elections up for grabs), people who just don't vote, racists turning out to vote for a racist/bigot, etc., had already done the damage needed.

It was clear early on November 8th -- like 7:15 PM -- that Clinton was in trouble when Kentucky vote came in and Clinton performed much more poorly than expected. That was very early in the evening, and I got sick -- then of course, DU was hacked making it much worse.

I honestly don't think votes were flipped. Sure it could have happened, but don't believe it did.

[Nevermypresident]

113. from N.C. - somehow between Nov. 2016 and recent primary, my party affiliation was CHANGED

which prevented me from voting for a specific Democratic candidate for U.S. Rep.

Of course, I raised h_ll at my precinct that I was not a registered Rethug and never have been and initially got blank stares. Long story short, I got a provisional ballot (which ended up not being counted) and spent several hours at my Board of Elections the next day. I demanded to know how I was a registered Democrat in Nov. 2016, and mysteriously became a republican this past May.

After they found my initial registration (which took 3 weeks - LOL), which was Democrat of course, no one could give me a explanation as to what happened.

I am fortunate that this came to light before mid-terms.

[pbmus]

120. I get a printed receipt when I purchase something from a store...

Should be the same thing when I vote....paper receipt saying who I voted for....

[Rene]

125. The key states that unexpectadly 'flipped' to Drumpf were all by 1%

That's statistically impossible.....that's programming to flip votes.

[MichMan]

128. I question your understanding of statistics.......

Perhaps you meant statistically improbable instead ?

[yallerdawg]

130. In a 50/50 country...

improbable might be a stretch?

[edhopper]

132. Thank you for all the recs

Many here see my point, a few do not.

What I am saying is we have proof now of Russian interference and collusion.

We must consider, I am saying CONSIDER, that they tampered with the vote. Not turn a blind eye to the possibility.

And given that we need to consider that a foreign power altered our election, shouldn't this warrant the most strenuous investigation our Government can give?

If they can spend 5 years and $millions on Hillary's emails and Benghazi, including full media coverage, shouldn't a direct assault on our democracy garner a little more effort?

Shouldn't we know for sure?

[Captain Stern]

155. Well said. I agree.

I think that Russian interference in our election has been proven. I don't think it's been proven that trump himself colluded (i think he's really just too damned stupid to be in on the details). But, I do think that evidence of collusion by folks that were working with/for trump will be coming out.

I absolutely agree that we should be looking into whether or not the Russians tampered with our actual vote totals. As things stand, there is no evidence at all that they did, but we certainly shouldn't stop searching for the facts.

And considering the time, and money, that were wasted on 'investigating' Clinton's e-mails, and the forty or fifty 'investigations' we had into the Benghazi incident, I think we can probably scrape together enough time, and money, to look into how much our primary international adversary had in our election.

[Hekate]

138. Obvious to those of us who remember Diebold. Yet on DU there is a vociferous clacque blaming Hillary

...blaming Hillary for being a terrible candidate with no message and the Democratic Party for being spineless with no message.

Challenge their inaccuracies and they just repeat their talking points louder.

I have to wonder wtf they are getting out of it?

[underthematrix]

157. I've read the indictment several times.

Here's the little gem no one is talking about on CNN or MSNBC

Link to tweet

I believe the results were tampered with at the county level in 3 states WI MI PA unbeknownst to those who were actually running the elections that day.

Yes I have been a poll worker in two presidential elections. One each for President Bush 2 and President Obama. We used touchscreens and yes the software is going across an intrnet and yes intranets can be hacked.

This very question about remote hacking of the voting machines was raised by Sen Dianne Feinstein during a hearing about the 2016 election. The person was in FBI cybercommand refused to answer any questions about active or pending investigations.

[edhopper]

143. About how the Russians knew what to do

this thread
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210871479

[jimlup]

158. This! I've been screaming this since Nov. 9, 2016

Seriously, I think votes were flipped and at several levels by multiple operations targeting vunerable easy targets.

Take Detroit - easiest vote hacking target on the planet. Even now disgraced Mayor Kwami Kilpatrick was able to do it. To think that Russian intelligence couldn't have nor wouldn't have is the definition of naiviety.

[bucolic_frolic]

169. The queerest thing about that campaign from my perspective here in PA

is how many times Trump visited these rural, forgotten counties that no sane candidate had visited - ever. They are centers of common working folk, not well educated, generations have lived there, largely ethnic European stock. And there was Trump bringing his vitriol to the working masses. He was working on them, and his campaign knew it would take every lever they could pull to tilt PA for his ticket - and the Russian meddling put them over the top.