Clinton Urged To Challenge Election Results Due To Possible Hacking [Update] (cnn.com) 1321
Reader Bruha writes: After examining results in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin computer scientists have discovered Clinton averaged 7% worse in counties with e voting machines vs. counties with only paper or optical scan ballots.From a CNN report:The computer scientists believe they have found evidence that vote totals in the three states could have been manipulated or hacked and presented their findings to top Clinton aides on a call last Thursday. The scientists, among them J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, told the Clinton campaign they believe there is a questionable trend of Clinton performing worse in counties that relied on electronic voting machines compared to paper ballots and optical scanners, according to the source. The group informed John Podesta, Clinton's campaign chairman, and Marc Elias, the campaign's general counsel, that Clinton received 7% fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic voting machines, which the group said could have been hacked.Halderman wrote more about it on Medium today in an article titled, "Want to Know if the Election was Hacked? Look at the Ballots"
Update: Green party candidate Jill Stein is asking for donations to fund a recount of her own in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which are the states key to Hillary Clinton's surprising loss. Stein says she must raise $2.5 million by Friday 4 pm central time to proceed.
Editor's note: the story has been updated and moved up on the front page.
Update: Green party candidate Jill Stein is asking for donations to fund a recount of her own in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which are the states key to Hillary Clinton's surprising loss. Stein says she must raise $2.5 million by Friday 4 pm central time to proceed.
Editor's note: the story has been updated and moved up on the front page.
Popcorn time! (Score:5, Funny)
Here we go, time to sit back and watch the show that is titled "America"
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Time to watch both sides put their fingers in their ears and yell "LA LA LA LA I can't hear you! This article means what I want it to mean!"
Re:Popcorn time! (Score:5, Informative)
Already been covered:
Clinton was blindsided by poll-shy, white middle-class, mostly women, voters in typically blue states that she ignored because she assumed they were in the "win" column, when, actually, they were in the Rust Belt.
The real 'shy Trump' vote - how 53% of white women pushed him to victory [theguardian.com].
Re: Popcorn time! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well if the alt-left didn't scream at everyone calling them all racist misogynistic cis-scum ultra Hitlers 2.0 for the past year, then maybe she'd of won.
Re:Popcorn time! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's worth noting that if you actually read the article, he doesn't say that the ballots actually were hacked: in fact, what he says is "Were this year’s deviations from pre-election polls the results of a cyberattack? Probably not. I believe the most likely explanation is that the polls were systematically wrong, rather than that the election was hacked." What he suggests is that it would be valuable to do the testing to verify: to "help allay doubt and give voters justified confidence that the results are accurate."
From this point of view, it does make sense: "trust but verify". It also makes sense to do something he doesn't suggest, which is to break down some of the electronic voting machines and inspect the code for malware (he only suggests comparing the paper trail to the electronic count, not looking at the machines that don't have a paper trail.)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Who would benefit-- us, but not the parties (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, America's interests would be served by doing a recount of some portio of the ballots to verify accuracy. Quite apart from who won, it's valuable to check, check, and check again to verify if there is an error or tampering.
But, yes, it may not be in the Democratic Party's best interest. Although to be frank, they are already being labelled "sore losers" despite conceding the election and explicitly instructing their supporters to accept the results, so I doubt it would make any difference in how they are perceived.
Re:Who would benefit-- us, but not the parties (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, America's interests would be served by doing a recount of some portion of the ballots to verify accuracy. Quite apart from who won, it's valuable to check, check, and check again to verify if there is an error or tampering.
How is it possible that this is not done as a matter of course?
Re:Who would benefit-- us, but not the parties (Score:5, Informative)
It is done as a matter of course. That's why most states have not certified their results yet.
Re:Popcorn time! (Score:5, Informative)
"Given how unpopular Trump is with half the nation"
Trouble is Clinton is equally unpopular, perhaps even more so than Trump
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Popcorn time! (Score:5, Informative)
not even close, you must be young. She is unpopular by damn near every veteran who served in the last 20 years. Her disdain for those who put their lives on the line in service to their country is well known. Even when she was first lady her disdain was apparent. Its amazing how times have changed and what used to be a small thing would shame someone into having to resign. 15 years ago Trent Lott was forced to resign because he told Strom Thurmond (someone older than dirt), at his 100th birthday party, gave a toast to try to make that old bastard feel good. Considering that it had been many decades since we had segregation, it didnt even occur to him that Strom ran on a segregation platform. So he was forced to resign. Consider how much dirt is on so many people thanks to silent whistle blowers and Wikileaks. Trent Lott never:
- got caught in Lie after Lie after Lie and later confirmed by Wikileaks
- complicit in the 1990s in denying constitutional rights to 150k veterans because they were drawing social security benefits so there they MIGHT be unstable
- promised to raise the taxes on the MIDDLE CLASS because 'its time they pay their fair share'
- Praised the 'Australian Solution' for gun control and promise the same thing here
- get caught in saying one thing publicly and then privately to the real masters (Goldman Sachs)
- Set up a private mail server. Lie and say its only for personal use. Delete what we now know turned out to be 650k email messages. Violate federal laws which regulate communication under the freedom of information act. Violate federal laws as to who can view classified information and how its secured and handled. Later in presidential debate insist that only those with clearance ever got sent those unencrypted, plain-text, highly classified, email messages only to get caught lying AGAIN when it was discovered she sent her worthless trust-fund daughter highly classified documents.
- Publicly call EVERY SINGLE ONE of your opponents supporters as the absolute DREGS of society (supporters you would want to sway to your side and win their vote btw)
- be so self centered and conceited that even the campaign slogan says it all "I'm with HER". Its ALWAYS about her not the suffering american worker.
- get caught Colluding with the mainstream media and STEALING the primary election.
- get caught organizing an ex-parte communication with an official presiding over her criminal investigation
- get caught cheating during debates because the campaign was being fed nearly ALL the questions in advance
- get outed by DNC favorite Michael Moore in 2007 as being the most corrupt politician by expressly stating that HRC took more donations by pharmaceuticals than every single other senator COMBINED.
so YES .. she IS that unpopular. Even people who are the CLOSEST to her cant stand her as a person. She has the personality of a rattle snake and twice the bite. She should have stopped when the FIRST screw-up hit the light of day. Its pure arrogance and selfishness to become the FIRST woman president that kept her from standing aside and letting a more qualified, or at LEAST significantly less tainted, person have a real shot.
Let me put it this way... she is so unpopular that DONALD TRUMP, an egotistical bastard with no background in politics, won an election against her. She and those around her represent the very essence of the disgusting Animal Farm behavior coming out of government over the last 20 years. The american people are sick of electing more pigs.
I would say there were more Never-Clintons and Never-Trump participants than those ACTUALLY in EITHER of their campaigns. My guess is that there were more Never-Clintons than Never-Trump's. Especially when the MSM ordered the staff to cut the feed any time Wikileaks got mentioned. That is yellow journalism and blatant coverup. People will not stand for some self appointed elitist class making such a thinly veiled attempt to manipulate, misguide, and mislead. It only enforces our oppositi
Re:Popcorn time! (Score:5, Insightful)
Fail. I'll posit that a very large number of voters didn't like either of them, they just closed their eyes and swallowed. You can't assume a vote means a like.
Re:Popcorn time! (Score:5, Informative)
The popular vote is meaningless. It would only be meaningful if it actually counted, but it doesn't. Voters know that we have an electoral college, and there are a lot of voters in states that are virtually guaranteed to go a certain way (California, New York, Texas, etc) who stay home because they know their vote isn't going to change anything. If the election was actually decided on a popular vote, THEN we could use that as some metric of determining popularity. We can't use it because people know that it's not a popular vote, and a lot of people stay home because of that.
We DO know that Trump and Clinton are the #1 and #2 most disliked candidates in the history of presidential polling, we do know that. We also know that Trump beat Clinton. We know that Clinton lost a national election to someone who is totally unqualified to be the president. We know that too. But it's kind of stupid to look at a difference in votes of less than 2% and use that to claim that Clinton is more "popular" than Trump. She very well could be.
Re:Popcorn time! (Score:4, Interesting)
It also makes sense to do something he doesn't suggest, which is to break down some of the electronic voting machines and inspect the code for malware (he only suggests comparing the paper trail to the electronic count, not looking at the machines that don't have a paper trail.)
The thing for me is that I voted on a paper ballot, which then went into a machine that counted my votes. I have no idea if that machine "switched" any of my choices, or if it recorded each one accurately. There were reports of that happening at places, so this isn't much different than using individual electronic voting machines.
Re:Popcorn time! (Score:5, Informative)
Where's that come from? A CNN article [cnn.com] which doesn't provide a citation to anything which supports that claim, not even NYmag [nymag.com], which seems to be the original source for it. That article is more specific, saying
Going further, the one name given in both articles, J. Alex Halderman, in the post at the other link in the summary, says the article was inaccurate:
... and goes on to give reasons for checking ballots, with absolutely no mention of the statistical anomalies claimed.
Furthermore, examining the above "7%" claim, the Halderman article has a map which shows that all counties in Michigan and Wisconsin use paper ballots. So, there can be no basis for the claim that there's a difference between electronic and paper ballot counties in Wisconsin (or Michigan)!
And, no info on methodology back up the claim - you can't directly compare two different counties in two different states (or even the same state) and expect them to have equivalent vote proportions. If such comparisons were made, were they against previous votes in the same counties? How are they comparing votes in Pennsylvania counties with electronic voting against Michigan and Wisconsin counties? Or are they just using a difference between polls and actual vote totals? Seems the polls were wrong in lots of places, and to try and base any statistical claims on them seems to be a case of garbage-in-garbage-out.
Finally, if as stated the concern is with electronic voting machines, why would they call for recounts in Michigan and Wisconsin, which use paper ballots?
It just defies logic and sense. Is this just fake news which has found its way onto CNN via NYMag?
Re:Popcorn time! (Score:5, Informative)
If you actually read, and try to track back to the source material, the summary is highly inaccurate.
There's been a lot of this going around in Slashdot lately and, frankly, it's starting to get annoying.
Re:Popcorn time! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Popcorn time! (Score:5, Insightful)
Full article (Score:4, Informative)
Nate has since turned it into a full article:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/demographics-not-hacking-explain-the-election-results/ [fivethirtyeight.com]
Bad statistics (Score:5, Informative)
Nope.
The p-value you "calculate" is not for the hypothesis "the election was hacked." It is for the hypothesis "counties with electronic-only voting machines vote differently than counties with paper-trail voting machines." One, but only one, explanation for why they might be different is that the electronic, but not the paper trail, voting machines were hacked. The other explanation, not ruled out, is that the type of voting machine is indicative of counties that are different in other ways as well.
Also, I note that you are "computing" p-values without actually looking at data-- basically, you're recycling rumors. What is the standard deviation by county for counties that have electronic-only voting, and what is the deviation for counties that don't? You don't have that data. So, you actually can't calculate statistics.
Re:Popcorn time! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Popcorn time! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd like to see it looked into, but unlike you I won't propagandize on some fantasy of what the results say. I just think statistically significant routine random audits should be performed as a matter of course, and am interested in the academic side of things.
The Clinton campaign has to walk a fine line here because as a stakeholder, they are the people in a position to petition to get the audits done should it involve the courts. They are damned if they do, because it may be the case (depending on the laws in said states) that they have to talk out two sides of their mouth, saying they think the recount might change something to the courts, so they have grounds, but saying it won't to the public so as not to create a commotion. They are damned if they don't, by people like you (I'd point out if there was shenanigans in the primary it is just as likely Republicans thought Bernie was more of a challenge in the general than Clinton, and they did the deed.) Also die-hards in the party won't like it if they do not pursue this.
We can't look to Trump to ask for a recount, as he has nothing to gain from it (i.e. he lost nothing) and thus may lack legal standing. If one of the third parties can say that this could tip them from having met the threshold for ballot access in that state for future elections, they could initiate the recount (Nader made his campaign useful in this respect ISTR at points in the past.)
Re:Very flawed legal analysis (Score:5, Insightful)
Here you go
1. She set up an email server with the intent to avoid document retention and freedom of information laws.
2. She used the server to store and transmit material with above top secret clearance. In violation of federal law and agreements she signed.
3. When legally subpoenaed for the email she destroyed the information. In violation of laws regarding obstruction of justice
4. She lied under oath about what she did and the circumstances around what she did. That's perjury.
That help ?
Re:Very flawed legal analysis (Score:4, Insightful)
The first point is not a fact. Once you assign motivations you are engaging in supposition and are no longer dealing with facts.
Re: Popcorn time! (Score:4, Interesting)
Once you have the methodology and code to do the statistical analysis it should be trivial to apply it to other elections.
What happens if it shows that Clinton was cheated out of the presidency and Sanders was cheated out of the candidate position?
Re: Popcorn time! (Score:4, Insightful)
...it would only expose vote tampering and fraud on the democrats' end
Why else would Hitlary not have begun immediately screaming out claims of vote-rigging??
Re:Popcorn time! (Score:5, Funny)
Given that Clinton raised twice the money that Trump did, the highest bidder theory is out the window.
How funny. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:How funny. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wasn't there election day reports from Pennsylvania of straight Republican votes magically changing to Democratic votes? With cell phone video of it happening?
Re:How funny. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah. They looked like pretty typical cases of a broken touch screen to me; the lack of any reports of Democratic votes changing to Republican might be reporting bias.
If you're going to rig a machine to change a vote, you'd be pretty dumb to make it show it changing.
Re:How funny. (Score:5, Informative)
There were a number of reports in both directions (some places were reporting favoring Clinton, others Trump). In each case they were found to be poorly calibrated touchscreens - aka, the click position is off from where the user intends. In no case that's been reported did it lead to mis-cast votes, as you have to confirm your selection.
If you were looking to rig an election, showing the person that you've changed their vote and asking them to confirm it would rank near the top of the "Idiotic Approaches" list.
Re:How funny. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How funny. (Score:5, Informative)
It sounds like you need to upgrade your touch panels, or work with Crestron to get working units. I have been working with Crestron TPs for almost 15 years and I can count the number of times I have had to re-calibrate them on one hand.
Re:How funny. (Score:5, Funny)
I can count the number of times I have had to re-calibrate them on one hand.
That's because your hand failed to register them. You need to recalibrate your hand too.
Re:How funny. (Score:4, Informative)
No you can't. By time you get to the third one, it's trying to count on the space between your fingers, and it never registers that instance. :^)
I support Crestron devices as well, and rarely have to calibrate the screens. I've seen others need more attention though. Love the ones that need you to press the "Calibrate Now" button, where it won't see that press correctly to do it.
Re:How funny. (Score:4)
Wasn't there election day reports from Pennsylvania of straight Republican votes magically changing to Democratic votes? With cell phone video of it happening?
Texas. [foxnews.com] Video of it here. [truthfeed.com] Another report here [kissfm969.com] And also PA. [nbcnews.com]
Re:How funny. (Score:5, Insightful)
So... (Score:3, Interesting)
Is this part of the fake news? Or is it actually real news? Or is it Clinton being a sore loser. The DNC and Clinton doesn't really have a leg to stand on though, especially after fixing their own primary to make sure she was the candidate.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the various academicians that still can't believe Trump won because, "nobody I know voted for Trump".
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the various academicians that still can't believe Trump won because, "nobody I know voted for Trump".
Put me in that corner. I accept the election result, but I'm baffled where all the Trump supporters came from. Most of my friends are die-hard Republicans, but I don't know a single person who (admitted) voting for Trump. I suspect that's because this election wasn't really fought along typical Republican vs Democrat, leftie vs rightie lines.
This election was more about the educated vs the blue collar workforce. Most people I know are college educated republicans and they claim they voted for Hillary and they hate Trump. I suspect out in the country, and in the less educated parts of town there were a lot of hourly wage democrats who voted for Donald.
I also think there are a lot of people who are in the "I would never vote for Trump" crowd, because they don't want to be associated with some of his more bizarre stances, who secretly voted for Trump when no one was looking.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
No know plenty of "blue collar" people who are "educated" and visa versa.
When you try to turn this into a "smart" vs "not smart" you are asking for trouble. It's more likely about people who have been negatively impacted by the last few decades of policy.
For instance, I'm thinking that there is a good chance that plenty of IT workers who have had to train their foreign replacement voted for Trump.
Re: (Score:3)
You're the one making this a "smart" vs "not smart" issue, the OP said "blue collar" and [college] educated which is basically a class thing. The latter are doing pretty great, despite the constant bitching about the evil Indians taking dem jerbs.
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
who secretly voted for Trump when no one was looking
We're living in the midst of another McCarthy-ist era; people can lose a lot if they're found to support the "wrong" side or have a non-SJW compliant opinion. The left should really look into working around the secret ballot in public elections as they've been trying to do in union elections [wikipedia.org]; that would secure their power forever.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of my friends are die-hard Republicans, but I don't know a single person who (admitted) voting for Trump. I suspect that's because this election wasn't really fought along typical Republican vs Democrat, leftie vs rightie lines.
And that's exactly what it is. You'll find people from both sides of the isle voted for Trump because of what Hillary stood for. The reality is there was more support for Trump because he wasn't establishment, she was. They feel that the current state of government doesn't represent the people. That's why he had the support. The media is at a loss, and still hasn't learned anything from it though. [observer.com]
A lot of people like myself, who are or were heavily invested in politics saw this coming. This has been building for ~20 odd years, and it's very close to reaching the full-on shoot politicians in the streets. The Tea Party stuff was a warning sign, just like AfD, FN, and so on are warning signs. The media refused to listen, the politicians refused to listen. In the end Trump is far less extreme then the next candidate would have been. Just like Le Pen is, just like Frauke Petry is.
I also think there are a lot of people who are in the "I would never vote for Trump" crowd, because they don't want to be associated with some of his more bizarre stances, who secretly voted for Trump when no one was looking.
It's more likely they don't want to be targeted or attacked. You can seem multiple cases of that all over the US. Unlike the people who claimed "Trump supporters" attacked them. Those people who made the claims are being charged with filing false police reports. Off the top of my head, I can think of fake rape, [q13fox.com] fake assaults, [reddit.com] fake vandalism, fake flyers [nbcchicago.com], fake deportation letters, fake claims of harassment and mugging. [breitbart.com]
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
You wouldn't know it from the SJWs, but you can walk a gay lesbian wearing a hijab through the whitest white town and the worst they might experience is a short chat with local law enforcement
Last I heard, Louisiana [rawstory.com] was part of the USA. As was New York City [cnn.com], and Charlotte, NC [wncn.com]
To bring this thread full-circle, just because you have the privilege of being a Cis White guy so you don't ever have to experience that stuff, doesn't mean it isn't happening to people.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm baffled where all the Trump supporters came from.
Trump said over and over that the election was rigged - he just never said which way... It broke his way and he's not complaining, so there you go.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
They voted for Trump. They just don't want to admit it.
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not all Trump voters are racists.
But every single racist person I know voted for Trump.
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
This election was more about the educated vs the blue collar workforce.
I rather doubt it. Trump offered nothing valuable to the blue collar workforce.
Much more likely is that this was a battle between "Not Trump" and "Not Clinton", it came down to who could get more people to the polls to stop the other party's candidate. At the end of the day, the GOP hatred for Clinton won out over the democrat's concern over Trump.
Just look at this year's numbers. Between 2012 and 2016, our country's population increased by over 10 million, yet 6 million fewer votes were cast. The bulk of those votes that were cast in 2012 but not in 2016 were people who voted Obama in 2012 and stayed home in 2016. There are very few states where Trump (in 2016) received more votes than Romney (in 2012), but there were many where Clinton (in 2016) received notably fewer than Obama (in 2012).
Hence the real question is whether the democratic voters sat out because they didn't care (or didn't like Hillary) or sat out because they believed all the polling before election day that said she was going to win easily.
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
but I'm baffled where all the Trump supporters came from.
There are a few different groups. Lets get the KKK, Nationalists, etc out of the way. Yes they voted for him (Like they would have voted for Clinton) but their numbers are so small they're really not worth discussing on a national scale.
In the Midwest:
In large part it's blue collar salt of the earth people in the middle. Come out and visit 'us'. (I didn't vote trump but my state and county did). If you make a joke about flyover country you'll probably get punched the 10th time you say it. Most of the people out here are the nicest people you'll meet. If you ever needed anything (Flat tire, etc) they'll be the first to stop and lend a hand. Everyone has had a job that was affected by NAFTA. (Real or perceived, most people think they were affected by NAFTA)
50% of household earning less than $35k don't have Internet. Some townships are on Dialup alone. [Despite having our tax money go to help fix that [wordpress.com]]. Our infastructure is literally falling apart around us. We don't have enough population in any single county to warrant people paying attention to us. When it comes to 'social' issues most of us are "I don't see it I don't care". When asked where a transgendered person pees it's probably in the woods like everyone else. But we really, really hate being dictated to about 'how it is' from the coasts.
Some of us tried the high road, my county went very Bernie in the primaries. Polls had both WI and MI completely wrong. We saw Bernie as the democratic way to 'make america great again' and were told, literally, "You aren't needed in November" despite filling stadiums and waiting in lines to see Sanders.
Republican votes per county have held flat 2008-2012-2016. Jill stein saw a 'huge' jump between 2012-2016. And Democratic voters more or less just stayed home.
The second group is a bit more entertaining to watch:
It's /r/The_Donald [vice.com]. It's the angry, contrarian young male vote. It seems to be a melting pot of RedPill, 4Chan, and a bunch of other places that demographic hangs out, online equivalent of a bag of cats.
Milo Yiannopoulos seemed to gain a lot of traction and followers out of the GamerGate. They have less in common other than they really really hate the "SJW" type and saw trump as the anti PC candidate. I'm fascinated by people watching so I've dug through some profiles. Most are just 18-25 year old males that feel something about Obama or Clinton gave them the short end of the stick.
The recruiting techniques are pretty much follow gang recruiting techniques that have been used for centuries and are used now to radicalize people for ISIS. "Did those people wrong you? It's this persons fault. Join us and we'll "fix" it".
Beyond that there's really nothing that binds them. (Other than some don't know how to create new Reddit Profiles).
For example one user is a ~20 year old 2nd generation Muslim Indian immigrant [reddit.com]. Follows soccer [reddit.com] and Cricket [reddit.com], loves cats [reddit.com], smokes cannabis [reddit.com] lives in NY, drives around a BMW 435i [i.sli.mg] and used to drive an Audi S5 [reddit.com]. And is all on the trump train ... because.
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd actually like to see their data before I make up my mind. If it's just a correlation, that could just be a correlation between where voting machines tend to be located in a state and thus what demographics of voters will use them. 7% difference wouldn't be unreasonable in such a case. On the other hand, if they're controlling for that, it is concerning.
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
No, that is completely false. Electoral votes are decided state-by-state. The electors haven't even cast their ballots yet, so the totals you're seeing are how many Trump and Clinton will get if the electors all vote the way the popular vote tells them to. The detail you're missing is that it's the popular vote in each state that matters, not the national popular vote.
For a simplified example of how this works, imagine 3 states with 10 people in them. Each state gets 1 electoral vote.
State A: All 10 people vote for Clinton. She gets one electoral vote.
State B: 6 people vote for Trump, 4 for Clinton. He gets one electoral vote.
State C: 6 people vote for Trump, 4 for Clinton. He gets one electoral vote.
Trump wins the election 2 electoral votes to 1, even though 18 people voted for Clinton and only 12 for Trump.
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
It's the various academicians that still can't believe Trump won because, "nobody I know voted for Trump".
This is a case of:
- A security researcher using the close election and hand-wringing over possible cheating to try to institutionalize actually CHECKING the paper audit trails against the tabulated results, before discarding the paper.
- And calling for candidates who lost close elections (on either side) to ask for a recount - because that's the only way to get it to happen in THIS election before the paper ballots ARE discarded, after the deadline which is JUST DAYS AWAY.
- Then the mainstream media (in "nobody I know voted for Trump" mode because they don't TALK to anybody outside their echo chamber) trying to spin that into "academics say Hillary lost due to vote-rigging".)
Read TFA: He explicitly says he thinks it's unlikely Hillary lost due to rigging, that the unexpected trump win was due to massively defective polls.
Disclaimer: I've met Halderman. He's a top-notch computer security researcher (and teacher of such in academia) and a cool head.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hard to call Clinton a sore loser since she hasn't supported any of these hacking theories or challenged the election in any way.
I don't like Hillary, but I've seen no sign of her being a sore loser. Some of her supporters have perhaps been.
Re:So... (Score:4, Funny)
Well, not giving a defeat speech is a little out of "best standard".
Oh really..I suppose the liberal media just staged this whole event then?
http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/09/... [cnn.com]
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, not giving a defeat speech is a little out of "best standard".
Oh really..I suppose the liberal media just staged this whole event then?
Indeed. And although I was never (and still am not) a fan of Clinton (nor Trump), I'm willing to cut her a break on this one. Whether or not you supported Trump and even if you believed media coverage and polls were biased against him, everything the Hillary campaign was going on indicated that she had a 95% or even 99% chance of winning. I'm sure they didn't adequately even prepare a draft of a concession speech until around 10pm the night of the election. Heck, we've heard reports from other countries that they didn't even prepare for the possibility of a Trump victory and only got around to trying to establish contacts with his campaign a week after the election! And Clinton and her family had been in the political limelight for the past 25 years or so -- and suddenly, she's looking at going home.
So, she called Trump and conceded. But rather than addressing a group of supporters in shock in the middle of the night with a half-assed speech, she waited for her speechwriters to sober up and write what was actually a reasonably good speech that actually called for an "open mind" to what Trump would do and a "peaceful transfer of power."
I may not like her, but I give her kudos for that speech. It may be more typical to give a concession speech in the middle of the night, but personally I'm glad she waited until the morning when it could be heard -- because it had important conciliatory messages... some of which haven't subsequently been heeded by her supporters.
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
Well, not giving a defeat speech is a little out of "best standard"
I just don't get the disconnect from reality involved with people like you. It's kind of like you believe that if you make shit up loudly enough and often enough then it will become true.
You can certainly make people *believe* it's true. However when the rubber meets the road, reality will not yield. I guess when everything fails to work as promised, it won't be you at fault for ignoring reality, no it will be someone else's fault. Some trumpanzees are already beginning to convince themselves pre-emptively that when things go wrong it'll be the Democrat's fault.
Now go and watch Clinton's concession speech and admit that it does in fact exist.
A lying Trump supporter? who would have thought? (Score:4, Funny)
Hillary Clinton gave a concession speech. It was watched by millions of people. Learn to use Google--it's accessible via your Breitbart box.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
Is this part of the fake news? Or is it actually real news? Or is it Clinton being a sore loser. The DNC and Clinton doesn't really have a leg to stand on though, especially after fixing their own primary to make sure she was the candidate.
Clinton and the DNC aren't doing this, and reportedly her team was already told about this data and hasn't done anything about it because they didn't think it indicated fraud.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the "fake news" part of this is really under appreciated.
This is exactly the kind of thing that erodes people's faith in the ability of the news media to report facts, and to report facts without bias.
It's a pretty big deal to suggest you have evidence the presidential election was stolen. This is not a feel-good fluff piece, it deserves a little editorial attention. A review of the evidence by an expert in election statistics shows that it's really just normal voting patterns. Some people are going to read the article on CNN, read the actual statisticians response elsewhere, and know CNN was putting out click bait, not a real news story. If you're upset that other people putting out fake click bait articles skewed the election, then what CNN is doing here should really piss you off.
There is no way a responsible journalist publishes this story, or a responsible news organization carries it. It is BS like this that supports the idea that there are different standards for "truth" in the media depending on the politics attached to article.
I think a different standard applies to Halderman. He's a computer security researcher who is using the election as an example of a vulnerable system. It's great for him to put out his Medium piece, he's not pretending to be anything other than a guy really interested in the mechanisms for verifying information systems, and he right up front is clear that he's not making any claim that the election was actually stolen.
Genuine question (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
I don't think there is any real way they can challenge the results.
If, as they are suggesting, the Trump win came from hacked voting machines, there is no paper trail to check against. Once you click the submit button, the vote is logged. They have no idea who cast it, or what (if it was different) their intention was. It also means that you have no concrete means to be sure that how you voted is what was counted. The reputation of the system is the only thing you can rely on.
Same thing with paper ballots.
Re: (Score:3)
With paper ballots this is easy, you have observers from each party at the polling station. Each voter takes their ballot, marks it, and then places it in a ballot box. The observers make sure the ballot boxes aren't tampered with until they are unsealed after the polls close, and are counted in front of the observers. Once the votes are counted they are placed back in the boxes under the supervision of the observers, and the boxes are sealed and stored for possible later re-counts.
This leaves each elector
Re: (Score:3)
There are also hybrid digital-paper methods that would allow for the rapid counting of digital with the auditing that paper provides. Where I vote, we fill in circles on a Scantron form. The form is scanned, the votes added in, and the form itself goes into a locked box. The votes are tallied digitally but if a recount is needed, the original paper forms can be retrieved. I'm not saying that Scantrons are the best system, but they are better than a purely digital touchscreen system.
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Re: Genuine question (Score:4, Informative)
Technically the electors aren't even required to vote according to the popular vote of their state in most states. No one has ever done it successfully though.
To expound, the electors are chosen by slate. It's not like they're just random people from the state who go vote. If the Republican wins and your state has 10 EV, then 10 prominent Republicans, like people who worked hard on the state campaign, etc, are sent to the Electoral College to proudly cast their vote for the Republican they helped get elected. And if the Democrats had won the state, the 10 electors would be prominent Democrats. It's one of those "big honor ceremonial" things. So the whole "faithless elector" thing is retarded, and your friends sharing that petition around on FaceBook probably never took Civics class. They're expecting that dozens of die hard partisans are going to switch their votes. This does not happen.
You can't (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Diebold et al have steadfastly refused to provide a verifiable paper trail, claiming it's too complicated, or incorporate any kind of audit log, we will never know if the votes which people cast were correctly recorded.
This applies to anyone during any election these machines have been in place, not only this one.
Re:You can't (Score:5, Insightful)
The ironic thing is when people ask for paper voting machines, they get told they are fossils. Yes, paper has issues (hanging chads, etc.), but it requires physical access to tamper with. E-voting, once the bits are flipped, there is no way, ever, to know what the total once was.
Best of all worlds is an E-voting machine that prints out a human readable summary of a ballot, then the ballot is physically dropped into a box. Worked for ages with mechanical voting systems.
Re: (Score:3)
Because some of the local election officials want to cheat.
I rather like my county's system. You fill out a paper ballot, and then you feed the ballot into the scantron machine for counting, and the ballot is locked in the machine. If you suspect the machines are rigged, the officials, watched by representatives of the candidates can crack open the machine and hand count the ballots. That is fair and reasonable. But this touchscreen only stuff can kiss my ass.
Re:You can't (Score:5, Insightful)
US elections baffle me. You use optical scanners? We use humans.
Our ballots are recorded with paper and pencil, and counted manually. Voting takes the average person no more than 10 minutes from the time they arrive at the polling station, until they have finished casting their ballot (yes, we actually have enough polling stations that we don't have long lines), and we have election results within an hour or two of the polls closing (short of any re-counts), and the process is transparent, and easily audited.
Why does the US continue to try to make voting as difficult and complex as possible? Is it really the end goal of the US government to prevent people from voting?
Re:You can't (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think you understand the magnitude of the problem.
My ballots for this last election were on 3 large pieces of card (larger than letter/A4). Two of these were double-sided, so a total of 5 sides of things to vote on.
There was a total of about 25 different items that I voted on.
Obviously, President, but also Federal Senator and Representative, state-level offices, local offices (mayor, city council, school board, etc.), the boards of various organizations such as BART and my local hospital.
Then, there were about 10 propositions, including one to legalize marijuana.
Re:You can't (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you think that other countries don't vote for things other than their leader?
We have multiple ballots for multiple issues. (no one ballot ever has more than one item on it)
Now we do spread things out a bit, with municipal, provincial, and federal votes happening at different times, but we still manage to vote for all these things without the complexity.
Doesn't matter (Score:4, Interesting)
This is like calling on the electors to not choose Trump, or come up with all sorts of far fetched plans that would somehow put Clinton on the big seat. Look at the county results map. Even if the DNC can somehow find a technicality to avoid a Trump presidency, the result will be more or less a civil war imo. There is no way that the actual people in those red counties are going to let 'the big city folks' put Trump aside.
I am not a big fan of him either. Nor of Hillary for that matter. But at this point it's gone so far that either he becomes president or you'll have riots from coast to coast.
Re: (Score:3)
either he becomes president or you'll have riots from coast to coast.
Don't discount that the controllers aren't hoping for exactly the latter outcome.
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:5, Informative)
I've seen this said before where it's 'WOW look at all those red counties' which discredits the fact that a whole ton of those counties are just 'slightly' red.
The popular vote was split, it's going to look that way in a whole lotta places. Thinking the election was a 'wash of republicanism' is misunderstanding what those result maps actually mean.
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:4, Interesting)
But at this point it's gone so far that either he becomes president or you'll have riots from coast to coast.
Riots are possible the other direction too you know.
In fact, I think the political system in the USA has become so divisive, and so hostile at this point, that civil war is almost inevitable. Probably not in this election cycle, but I don't know how much more of this sort of politics the nation can withstand. Each side of every election tries harder and harder to tell everyone that if you don't vote for their candidate that you are a horrible and unpatriotic American who wants to destroy the country. People are starting to believe it. And when some parts of the population actively despise other parts of the population with the amount of vitriol that the 2 parties want, how long before it boils over?
Computer scientists don't understand sociology (Score:5, Insightful)
Having read earlier reports of this analysis, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree.
From what I read, there was no attempt to find other explanations, like a demographic preference for e-voting over paper, or the local economic costs of maintaining one particular voting mechanism.
Nope, let's just just straight to assuming hacking.
Re:Computer scientists don't understand sociology (Score:5, Informative)
That said, at some point we're going to need to take measures to make sure that hacking/cheating/rigging doesn't occur, even if only to head off these kinds of accusations. We should not simply blindly trust that an unaudited computer system does what we're told it should. This is something we should put in place for future elections, at the very least, because even if no one actually does try to cheat, it's far too easy to undermine the legitimacy of an election if there's no way to confirm the results are fair. Random audits, such as suggested by Ron Rivest and Phil Stark, would be a good step towards that end:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/... [usatoday.com]
Re:Computer scientists don't understand sociology (Score:5, Insightful)
While true that the differences may be demographic in nature, these claims point to a bigger problem with e-voting machines: there is no paper trail to allow the results to be audited and scrutinized. The integrity of the results cannot be verified. With a paper ballot, a careful manual recount would've been possible, with multiple observers to confirm the count. This is simply not possible with electronic ballots
Having a cloud of suspicion over the results benefits no one, most of all Trump himself. Any election system that does not have an auditable paper trail will become a breeding ground for conspiracy theories and a focus for electoral challenges. This is bad not just for the losing candidate, but for democracy in general, as it risks deligitimizing the results.
Re:Computer scientists don't understand sociology (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps the single largest reason for the massive miscalculation of predictions was the vast social pressure against admitting you wanted to vote for Trump. This is why we have secret ballots, to forestall such pressures and threats of retaliation.
Re: (Score:3)
To be fair, this is the standard, accepted mechanism for dealing with any emotionally charged issue today. What people FEEL about it is considered more valid than the facts of the matter, to the point that asking for, much less providing and citing facts is considered politically incorrect on one side and unpatriotic/traitorous on the other.
For example;
- any reason other than sexism for male/female hiring rates, pay differences, or if there is a wage gap
- any reason other than
As an engineer, I want to know... (Score:3)
Were the stats adjusted for racial and income makeup of the counties examined? Clinton underperformed among poor white voters. The reason for this "discrepency" is probably a correlation between poor counties and use of electronic voting machines. The D's (who I normally vote with) need no excuse for losing other than the shitty campaign their candidate ran. #itshillarysfault.
Please get rid of e-voting machines now (Score:5, Insightful)
One question (Score:5, Insightful)
If Donald Trump had gotten 2 million more popular votes than Hillary Clinton and still lost the election, would he and his supporters have accepted it graciously and not claimed fraud?
Hell, Trump was claiming fraud before the election even took place.
I say she goes for it (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm 40 (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Repeal ACA. I have friends who depend on the medicare expansion to live. One's a Type-1 diabetic who until Obamacare didn't have enough insulin. Almost died a few times. He's 8 years older now and probably gonna die the next time.
2. End of Roe v Wade. My daughter has several congenital problems that might some day necessitate an abortion. Mike Pence would rather see her flown into God's embrace than risk the sin that is Abortion. Yeah, I'm being flippant by putting it that way, but it doesn't make it less true.
3. Cash repatriation. Got a job? Got friends with jobs? Prepare for the biggest round of layoffs since the
I could go on and on. Trump supporters who aren't millionaires are all fucked, and they've dragged me and my family and friends along for the ride. If you see a train coming your way and you can't get out of the way because of a gaggle of morons any sane person would react with fear.
Politifact rated claims of rigging "Pants on Fire" (Score:5, Informative)
Ummm...yeah (Score:4, Informative)
Isn't this the same group that assured all the voters that the election results could not possibly be manipulated when Trump suggest just that, prior to the election? And the same group that, given Hilary's higher popular vote numbers, are calling for the abolition of the Electoral College?
I think that Wolf Blitzer and the rest of the CNN crew and still grumpy that Hillary lost. Well get over it Wolfie - you got your ass handed to you. Despite your one sided reporting and thinly veiled rooting for Hillary you lost.
CNN and MSNBC and others are just pissed off that they have been exposed as surrogates of the Democrat party. I think that a lot of people have long suspected that is the case but now it is in full view. If you want to hear Democrat cheerleaders then go to CNN or MSNBC. If you want to hear Republican cheerleaders then go to FOX. If you want the actual truth, you know that thing that used to be called "news", then you are going to have to go to a variety of web sites and other outlets and try to filter out all the political BS. That's what the world has come to.
Re:Why won't Democrats support the outcome? (Score:5, Insightful)
So what you're saying is if there's a hint of voting fraud we should as a nation just say 'fuck it' and not take a look?
Cause that's pants on head stupid.
Re:Why won't Democrats support the outcome? (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh, it's the standard difference between the parties' approach, and I'd be shocked if you didn't actually know why.
* Republicans focus on voter fraud because stricter restrictions on what people need to vote most often discourage or prevent youth and minority turnout.
* Democrats focus on disenfranchisement, not fraud, for precisely the same reason.
To be fair to Democrats, cases of confirmed voter fraud are exceedingly rare (31 cases between 2000 and 2014 - rarer than being struck by lightning), while cases of confirmed erroneous disenfranchisement are not (tens of thousands erroneously removed from the rolls). The reason that voter fraud (impersonation) is rare is because the risks vastly exceed the reward. You don't throw an election by casting one extra vote for your candidate at the risk of facing a $10k fine and jailtime if you're caught - per case. Even most of the extremely-reported cases of "dead people voting" in recent history have turned out to be clerical errors (e.g. wrong date on the death certificate). With millions of people dying every year, these sorts of errors will happen at a given rate every election.
As for the particular example of Voter ID laws: Not everyone in the US has a photo ID. Those who don't are proportionally younger (e.g. haven't registered yet, haven't gotten a driving license yet, etc), poorer (no money for a car so no driving license; not traveling so no need for passport, etc), often minorities, Native Americans, etc - groups that tend to be overwhelmingly Democrats. So it shouldn't be much of a surprise that Republicans support these laws and Democrats oppose them. The courts have generally gone against them because they proportionally disenfranchise certain groups, and more to the point were often explicitly planned to do so. In the case of North Carolina, for example, the legislature explicitly requested data on different methods of voting by race, and then explicitly crafted legislation to target African Americans based on that data.
If the US could get its act together and issue everyone a national ID, the situation would be different. But I know Americans are often against things like national IDs involving national databases and other scary things.
Re:Why won't Democrats support the outcome? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can point out a flaw in the system without agreeing with the flaw in the system...
I really don't understand this us/them mentality that people keep spewing. We all work together, we are family members, coworkers and fellow human beings with the same exact needs.
I work in a heavily republican environment. But they are all good people and I respect my co-workers. I don't believe in some of their choices, but who cares? Why should someone's choice for president make them the enemy? It's just stupid.
The only reason I can come up with is that it is in the best interest for those in power to keep the voting base divided. So all these "problems" are weaponized and sold to us as the bogey man coming to take our children.
Re: (Score:3)
computer science professor who believes that he has evidence that the election was rigged.
I can count on one hand how many professors I've met who aren't Democrat and still have fingers left to pick my nose.
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Sort of...
It's also very disappointing that the polls and predictions were so wildly incorrect. That is highly irregular, though not indicative of foul play.
I'm not ambitious enough to find the article, but Nate Silver had an informative retrospective piece about how some of the most influential voting blocks ended up voting contrary to what they were assumed to do, while polls concentrated on getting accurate results in other areas more typically "on the fence".
Trump's campaign did a surprisingly good job
Re:Already DeBunked (Score:4, Informative)
Reference please. This says just the opposite [heavy.com].
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Re: Own It (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone with any modicum of reasoning could figure out pretty quick that he isn't cut out for being POTUSA.
Re:Yeah, this is a real head-scratcher (Score:5, Informative)
She lost in places that don't have the money to buy fancy electronic voting machines because the people are poorer.
No, she lost in places that do have the money to buy fancy electronic voting machines.