Oh, the ones who count the votes are unassailable. Only 85k votes in six states

[LaydeeBug]

handed this to him, and there's Russian infiltration into the *media* and into the GOP, henceforth KGB/GOP, but **NOT** in anyone who counted any votes or DIDN'T count them as the situation might warrant.

THAT is *crazy* conspiracy talk.

All of the polls were *wrong*. All of the press was wrong. The election was NOT hacked. Oh sure, (after the truth smacks them upside the fucking head) *maybe* they hacked emails, but they did NOT hack the election itself.

Ever.

And you can't prove they did either.

Right.

DON'T LET THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS FRAME THE NARRATIVE. DU WAS TARGETED FOR A REASON. THE PRESS JUST WANTS TO BE OFF THE HOOK FOR THEIR MALFEASANCE, HOWEVER DELIBERATE OR DERELICT. IT DOES NOT MATTER. RUSSIA DID THIS. THE GOP HELPED THEM. ANY PERSON IN THE USA CAN BE CHARGED WITH TREASON FOR GIVING AID AND COMFORT TO THE ENEMY, SO THERE IS ***NEVER*** GOING TO BE A 'MOVE ON' MOMENT.

Don't let them do it. Just. fucking. don't.

[Jean-Jacques Roussea]

1. This should be the narrative

"Russia scared of Crafty Strongman Hillary Clinton so they Install Weak Hysterical and Petty Donald Trump"

It may make electors actually change their mind. That's the primary goal we need to work towards right now. After Dec 19th, in the likely event he's elected, we need to focus on congress confirming it. And if he's still en-route to the presidency... well, we'll start building fallout shelters I guess.

[LaydeeBug]

2. because it's the truth. nt

[Coyotl]

39. Actually, it is off by quite a bit.

You need to halve the number. If 40,000 people voted Clinton instead of Trump, Clinton wins the electoral college.

The great thing about stolen votes, they count twice ... you add one to one column and subtract one from the other.

[LaydeeBug]

46. your last sentence is so SPOT ON, it's haunting. nt

[MichMary]

3. How could the vote be hacked

when the machines aren't on the I-net?

[triron]

4. Central tabulators are.

Voting machines can be tampered with.
Voter registrations are hackable, etc.

[MichMary]

5. But--

wouldn't hacking of central tabulators shown up in the Wisconsin recount?

It would take an army of people to tamper with individual voting machines, even if it was only done in a few states.

Even if registrations were hacked, again, it would take an army of people voting multiple times with fake registrations to swing an election.

Not saying it couldn't happen, but it would have taken way too much monkey business among way too many people to keep something like that quiet.

[triron]

6. OK if you are in such disbelief, read this (brief)

https://www.democracynow.org/2016/11/30/cybersecurity_expert_bruce_schneier_american_elections

[synergie]

33. No. They did not do hand recounts, they merely used optical scanners. You wouldn't need an "army"

just a virus that would infect the disks that the machines used. A hand recount and human eyes would be a good way of checking, but those were prevented in certain counties in WI and MI.

Registrations being hacked would not be about people voting multiple times, it would be about preventing certain people from voting at all. Cross check prevents an "army" of people from voting each time it's used.

[dionysus]

41. Because there are apparently a lot of people who just can't believe

that we lost sich a winnable election to an utter jack-ass.

The ability some have to put on blinders in this regard, is troubling. That hillary was a lackluster candidate compared to her skills and experience in office, just cannot be admitted.

That fucking russia stole the election, a grand CT, isn't needed when you've got a voting populace of shallow, prejudiced simpletons.

Or that "it's no coincidence" that DU was hacked (by the russians obviously) is granting an absurdly inflated level of importance to a small message board only known to political junkies...

[Yurovsky]

42. If people spend all their time, energy, and money ....

fighting over the last election, they'll be ill-prepared for the NEXT election.

Mid-terms are less than 2 years away. I have a close friend who is a state legislator (she sub-leases office space from my wife's firm) and she is already in fund-raising/re-election mode just 6 weeks after winning re-election. She was a HUGE Hillary supporter and she spent maybe 1 day being bummed out before she dusted herself off and got back to the task at hand (in her case, legislating while keeping her seat and winning more seats for the Democratic Party statewide).

It's ok to be pissed off but channel your energy towards changing the makeup of the Congress and legislative bodies within your states. If they're Republican-held, shrink their majorities or flip them. If the Democratsic party is in power, increase your majority. Get more Democratic Governors and statewide office holders elected. And in 4 years, send Orange Julius Caesar back to his reality TV gig full-time.

Don't keep fighting the last war people...

[dionysus]

44. Thats the attitude i like! This "it's the end of the world our lives are ruined1!!1eleventy!"

attitude is counterproductive IMO

[mythology]

7. Please don't ask awkward questions like that

It troubles the conspiracy theorists. The absence of any evidence is just further proof of the conspiracy.

[triron]

8. Also this

http://www.gregpalast.com/

(although Palast does not address specifically hacking by Russians)

[triron]

9. And this

http://fortune.com/2016/11/04/voting-machine-hack-watch-video-cylance/

[LaydeeBug]

11. Thank you for these links. bookmarked. nt

[triron]

10. And this

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/2016-elections-russia-hack-how-to-hack-an-election-in-seven-minutes-214144

[TheFrenchRazor]

20. do a few searches on the subject, and you will see. it is totally possible, in multiple ways, and

would not take an "army of people" at all. seriously, where have you been for the last 20 years or so?

[synergie]

32. The disks and cards that they are loaded with could be hacked.

[0rganism]

12. there... are... four... lights

[BzaDem]

13. The polls were MORE WRONG in 2012. Were you complaining then?

The final poll average in 2012 had Obama ahead by 1 point. He won by 3.9 points. Were you calling for an investigation then?

It is surreal that people all over DU were attacking Nate Silver, for having the gall to point out that Clinton was just a normal polling error away from losing the election -- and then, when Clinton lost by a normal polling error, claiming that the only possible explanation is fraud.

It would take a conspiracy of hundreds of people to flip three states by the margins required in this election. Perhaps the more likely explanation is true -- that she simply lost, with a normal polling error to blame for the surprise.

[triron]

14. You are referring only to national polls

and also pre-election at that. I think the poster is referring to RCP averages for many swing states plus (I am presuming) exit polls.

[BzaDem]

15. Same thing with swing state polls.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/11/12/it_wasnt_the_polls_that_missed_it_was_the_pundits_132333.amp.html

As far as exit polls, those are almost always off. Unlike pre-election polls, they are not intended to measure the margin between the candidates, but rather information about the makeup of voters and issues. Furthermore, they are off not just in swing states, but all states. The idea that there is some sort of conspiracy even in states that aren't ever close (a conspiracy that would require tens of thousands of people that all dont get caught) is nuts.

[triron]

16. All off in the same direction (or at least almost all)?

Statistically very improbable.

[BzaDem]

25. Polls are often wrong in the same direction. State polls underestimated Obama by 2.5% on average.

That's precisely why Nate Silver was less wrong than all the other models this year. He took into account that polling error is often correlated between states (in addition to the high number of undecideds and third party voters). This makes sense -- if the polls are less likely to reach a group that ends up voting slightly more heavily in one state, the same is likely to be true in other states.

Exit polls are often off by even more than that. See President Kerry. Most people will not talk to exit pollsters, and differential non-response bias (and non-representative precinct selection) will skew the toplines of the exit polls (which is why even the exit pollsters say not to take the toplines seriously).

[triron]

26. I was referring

more to the cnn raw exit polls. Just because Silver has a hypothesis about why the polls were off does not make it so. I'm not buying into that.

[BzaDem]

27. Exit polls had Gore winning Alabama and Georgia, and Bill winning Indiana and Texas.

They are always way off, which is why exit pollsters specifically say not to look at their unadjusted toplines. It isn't just Nate Silver that you are disagreeing with.

Perhaps there is a cross-generation conspiracy involving tens of thousands of people each election (including in noncompetitive states) to rig the vote. Or maybe -- just maybe -- we should reject this kind of conspiratorial thinking and stop taking unadjusted exit poll toplines so seriously.

[triron]

28. You have a link or reference to this data?

[triron]

30. btw Richard Charnin

is a mathematician with good credentials.

[triron]

29. Here is a link

that suggests you are half right. Exit polls that had Gore winning some states were off but not due to the failure of exit polling but due (again) to election fraud.

https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/unadjusted-state-exit-polls-indicate-that-al-gore-won-a-mini-landslide-in-2000/

[BzaDem]

31. States the exits said Gore won that he lost: AL AR AZ CO FL GA MO NC NV TN TX VA

As you said, perhaps there was fraud in all of those states, involving a massive conspiracy -- to rig not just the results, but the pre-election polls conducted by many different organizations (which were slightly more Bush leaning than the results). Perhaps only the exits are right.

Or maybe the exits are just wrong.

[triron]

37. I will grant that some exit polls may be wrong

but when a vast majority are wrong all in a direction favoring the candidate who 'lost' the exit poll
then it becomes a statistical improbability so enormous as to be virtually impossible. If you get 25 heads out of 30 tosses on fair coin tosses wouldn't you be awfully surprised? I would not bet much money on getting that result ever if I tossed 10000 times.

[BzaDem]

45. The statistical argument doesn't work without a perfect random sample.

Furthermore, the sample in an exit poll (or any poll) is NEVER perfectly random. In fact, it isn't even close.

Exit pollsters do not sample voters at every precinct. Instead, they pick precincts in advance (trying to get a representative subset of precincts that are representative of the state as a whole). But this is just guesswork. Precincts that look representative based off of previous voting data might be extremely unrepresentative of the electorate in the current election. For example, in past elections, voting was not as polarized by education levels as it was in this election. So a good subset of precincts in the past might be skewed towards lower or higher education levels voters, in a way that didn't matter in 2012 but did matter in 2016. And this is before we start talking about the incredibly low response rate (of all polls, including exit polls), which significantly increases the probability of differential non-response bias.

You are taking a supposed anamoly in the data (that actually has very credible benign explanations), saying that it would be statistically improbable under perfect assumptions that don't exist in reality, and then immediately jumping to the conclusion that systemic fraud is the explanation. But you should apply the same rigor to the alternative explanation (fraud) as you are applying to analyzing the anamoly.

Due to the decentralized nature of our elections, a systemic conspiracy would require tens of thousands of people to succeed at flipping votes in some way, and not get caught. Let's assume for the sake of argument that tens of thousands of people DID attempt to pull off a systemic conspiracy. Each one of them has some probability of getting caught. Let's further assume for the sake of argument that the probability of getting caught is small, say 1%. What are the odds that (say) 10000 people succeed in not getting caught with a 1% detection rate? Approximately 1 over 10 to the 44th power.

[LaydeeBug]

36. They've been doing this incrementally for years now. Brownback in Kansas, even McTurtle

We need to demand access to and independent voting systems, even if it means going back to a hand count. We can WAIT a fucking day for results.

We cannot allow this to happen.

[Fast Walker 52]

17. all the statistical models this year were WAY off

Nate Silver made his reputation by getting the 2012 vote right, by concentrating on states.

[triron]

18. That is a story pushed by MSM as well.

[Fast Walker 52]

19. um, because it's TRUE

[LaydeeBug]

21. um, no it's not

[LaydeeBug]

22. you're *joking*, right?

[BzaDem]

24. Are you saying that the polls were less wrong in 2012 than in 2016?

As I said, the national polls underestimated Obama's margin in 2012 by almost three times as much as the national polls underestimated Trump's margin (3% vs. 1%).

State polling error were similar between 2012 and 2016.

These are numbers -- not feelings.

[LaydeeBug]

38. No. I am saying the election was rigged this time...why conflate two cycles?

[SickOfTheOnePct]

47. I think you're missing the point

If the polls were off by a similar margin in 2012, why didn't you see that as an indication of election rigging?

Or is election rigging only a consideration when we lose?

[LaydeeBug]

48. Oh it's entirely possible

that they rigged it in 2012, but we overcame that fix.

But it is evident that they did it this time, and it was catastrophic for us.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

49. LOL

"There are none so blind as those who will not see"

[LaydeeBug]

50. Funny how that goes. nt

[triron]

23. knr again

[LaydeeBug]

34. Wow, looks like I might be psychic. nt

[triron]

35. see post 47 in http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512622637

[triron]

40. As for optical scanners and tabulators, wikipedia has this:

"One form of wholesale fraud possible with optical scan voting systems is during the recording of votes. Douglas W. Jones of the University of Iowa states that if a potential attacker were to gain access to the voting system configuration files, they would be able to "credit one candidate with votes intended for another." He found these files are exposed in the computer system used to prepare the election, making them vulnerable to anyone setting up the election. The files are then transferred to the voting system using removable media, and "anyone with access to these media could potentially attack the system."[15]

Another form of wholesale fraud is during tabulation. Possible attacks have been demonstrated by Harri Hursti[16] and the University of Connecticut.[17]

If an attacker is able to obtain a blank ballot (by theft, counterfeit, or a legitimate absentee ballot) the attacker can then mark the ballot for their chosen candidates and convince (through intimidation or bribery) a voter to take the pre-marked ballot to a polling station, exchange it for the blank ballot issued and return the blank ballot to the attacker. This is known as chain voting[18]"

[LaydeeBug]

43. triron, you are an inspiration on this...THANK YOU!!!!! nt