So it seems that computer scientists and election lawyers have advised the Hillary Clinton campaign to demand a recount in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania because they have found evidence that shows the results “MAY HAVE BEEN manipulated or Shacked.” I emphasize MAY HAVE BEEN because the evidence is not crystal clear. New York Magazine reported:
Last Thursday, the activists held a conference call with Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and campaign general counsel Marc Elias to make their case, according to a source briefed on the call. The academics presented findings showing that in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic-voting machines compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots. Based on this statistical analysis, Clinton may have been denied as many as 30,000 votes; she lost Wisconsin by 27,000. While it’s important to note the group has not found proof of hacking or manipulation, they are arguing to the campaign that the suspicious pattern merits an independent review — especially in light of the fact that the Obama White House has accused the Russian government of hacking the Democratic National Committee.
Before Hillary supporters get all riled up, other experts have said any hacking did not change the election. One of the experts in the magazine article even said that the authors misrepresented what he said and had to clarify his points in a separate article.
Nate Silver at the FiveThirtyEight blog says his team’s analysis says that demographics cost Hillary the election, not hacking:
Without a recount, all we can do for now is look for any meaningful difference in the three states named in the New York article between votes in counties that used paper ballots and votes in ones that used machines. That quickly crossed Michigan off the list: The entire state uses paper ballots, which are read by optical scanners.2 So we couldn’t compare results by type of voting in that state. Instead, we checked the six other states with a margin between Clinton and Trump of less than 10 percentage points that use a mix of paper and machine voting: Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Virginia.
For each county in those states, we looked at Clinton’s vote share and whether it was associated with the type of voting system the county used, based on voting-system data compiled by a nonprofit electoral-reform group called Verified Voting and 2016 vote data from Dave Leip’s U.S. Election Atlas and ABC News.3 It doesn’t make much sense, though, to just look at raw vote counts and how they differed, because we know there are many factors that affect how a county voted, both in those states and everywhere else around the country. So we separated out two of the main factors that we know drove differences in voting results: the share of each county’s population age 25 and older with a college degree, and the share of the county that is non-white.4
J. Alex Halderman, one of the experts in the New York magazine, also countered the article at Medium, writing that the magazine misrepresented his argument and put it out in his own words in his post:
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. But I don’t believe that either one of these seemingly unlikely explanations is overwhelmingly more likely than the other. The only way to know whether a cyberattack changed the result is to closely examine the available physical evidence — paper ballots and voting equipment in critical states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, nobody is ever going to examine that evidence unless candidates in those states act now, in the next several days, to petition for recounts.
Other experts spoke to The Daily Beast about the possible hack. As Shane Harris wrote, “[F]or hackers to have changed the votes in three states would have been even more surprising than Trump’s victory.” Hillary would have to win all three of those states in order to change the election:
“There is zero evidence of tampering right now. Zero,” David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told The Daily Beast. The simpler explanation for why the vote deviated from expectations and historical trends was that Barack Obama wasn’t at the top of the ticket. The results for Clinton “only look off when you compare them to the Obama elections” in 2008 and 2012, Becker said.
Harris stated that these hackers would have started very early in the election and have people literally on the ground in states that do not use machines by “infiltrating elections offices, and working up to Election Day if not on the day itself.”
In other words, just accept the fact that Hillary was a horrible candidate and stop blaming others for the loss.
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This is the first time in recent memory (or, more to the point, my memory) that Democrats have admitted the possibility that outright voter fraud could be significant.
This admission should be useful in the future, when they relapse to their standard claim that such a thing is negligible.
Trump’s justice department needs an early launch of a program to diminish voting fraud.
No. See Fen’s Law 😉
“The Left doesn’t really believe in the things they lecture the rest of us about”
It means you will not be able to corner them on their hypocrisy here, because they don’t care about voter fraud to begin with. They care about winning. The ends justifies the means.
They same Democrats who are complaining about voter fraud today will turn around and argue voter fraud is insignificant tomorrow. The only believe in what is convenient to their argument at the time.
The line of attack I would take is to argue that they don’t care about voter fraud to begin with, so why take them seriously now.
It doesn’t matter if they don’t like it.
It doesn’t matter if they deny it.
It doesn’t matter how much they whine about it.
They can still be pummeled with it. Again. And again. And again.
Eventually in the English language, “democratic” will be seen—correctly, I believe—as a synonym for “voter fraud”.
Voter photo ID with a national campaign to get every citizen a photo ID that can get them into the DOJ building.
Something unique, thumbprint?
You don’t suppose her hateful attitude towards the voters had something to do with her loss. Then there was her campaign to get Americans to learn a foreign language. Most people chose Greek for some obscure reason, but found the language difficult to master so they only learned a couple of words. What were they? Oh yeah, had to read my mother’s tattoo, Molon Labe. On the bright side, nobody knew how to say “Bitch” at the tattoo parlor or mom would have that on her forehead forever. Then there was Hillary and Bill’s total lack of respect for the law and Bingo! MAGA!
Hello. This an attempt to get the camel’s nose in the tent. Remember the Florida 2000 recount?
“The hand counting continues. From the first it is completely open to mischief. In walks mischief.” – Noonan
http://www.peggynoonan.com/121/
Exactly, how do you recount electronic voting machines ?
What they want is to count the paper ballots in those places where they’re available, and see whether the numbers match what the scanners reported. Not because they suspect fraud, but because fraud is so easy and if we never look we’ll never find it even if it’s there.
Bullshit. For YEARS every time the Republicans try to institute any kind of vote security the Democrats scream about it being evil and racist because fraud didn’t exist.
Funny how they suddenly care about it now.
This is nothing less than them trying to use the process to try and steal the election.
If they want to finally admit that yes, fraud could be a major problem, then they can pass laws to prevent it BEFORE the next election.
What makes you think these are Democrats?
Because, dear Milhouse, every single reported instance of large, systemic voter fraud involves the Democratic Party.
Huh? What’s that got to do with it? These people are not committing fraud, so by your logic they can’t be Democrats! They want the paper votes manually checked against the scanner count, because that’s the only way to detect any fraud in the count. If nobody ever checks for it we’ll never know whether it exists, and that fact itself will encourage people to commit it. Checking the count makes more sense than voter ID, because this sort of fraud is easier to commit; it isn’t done because nobody wants to spend the money, so the only way to get it done in a state is to ask for a recount, and the only one who can do that is a candidate who lost the state by a small margin.
Maybe I missed you point.
Anyway, see: North Carolina. Gov. Pat McCrory, currently behind by 6800 votes, began the process under the statute to request a statwide recount.
Oh c’mon… every knows it’s leftist Democrats pushing for this nonsense. They laughed at Trump when he mentioned it. Now that they lost, suddenly, there is voter fraud. You people are falling for their nonsense. If there were issues with voter fraud, it should have been dealt with before not simply because a political party know cries ‘unfair’.
We live in a nation now where public temper tantrums are celebrated instead of chastened.
Indeed. My sister, who at least at the time was a Democrat party aparatchik, kept informing me in ’08 that only the Republican party had ever committed vote fraud in the history of the country. Why else was there that consent decree? Of course the voting in King County WA during the ’04 gubenatorial election where they ended up with more votes cast than registered voters, and after all those thousands of extra votes were found, suddenly the democrat won (boxes ‘found’ in election officials’ cars days after the election, etc., etc., etc.) and it wasn’t fishy at all. My thoughts were that if that was Republican vote fraud the Dems ought to be encouraging it since it only ever seemed to benefit them.
The consent decree isn’t about fraud, it’s about so-called “voter suppression”, which is pretty much a null concept. It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard of, and if I were on today’s RNC I’d move to challenge it. I have no idea what the RNC was doing 30 years ago, though I doubt it was anything wrong; but it should never have made that stipulation, no court should have allowed it, and it certainly shouldn’t be bound by it now.
The nutters on the Left are not one whit behind the nutters on the Right.
Remember how Obama was going to cancel the election?
Wasn’t the corollary to that this election’s true lesson?
But yes, alas, my facebook has been blowing up with stories related to this, so it’s got traction in the moonbat sphere.
It is instructive that during the 2008 campaign and after Obama won the election, the Democrats constantly bragged that they are the masters of technology and that the Bush administration (and all Republicans) were totally inferior in the use of computers, the internet, and all things tech. Certainly, due to the failure of Obamacare, the monumental governmental hacking that has occurred during the Obama administration, one might question that. However, due to the fact that the SOROS MILLIONS resulted in capturing most of the Secretary of State (state) offices, it seems impossible that anyone other than the brilliant Democrats could have hacked any elections.
Note that illegal votes play no part in this analysis by three Democratic cranks. Just mysterious dealings by Russians in collusion with Trump.
Actual fraud as was reported in Michigan, California (perhaps a million votes by illegals), Florida (eye witnesses reported absentee ballots not returned were filled out by Democrats in one county), Pennsylvania (onsite reporting of fraud in a black precinct). And no doubt many others. All favor Democrats.
Were the voting machines on Hillary’s server, if they were they probably were hacked!
While they are trying to have the election invalidated DJT is showing that he’s the President. They have two battles to fight, quantity of EC votes and quality of candidate. They’ve lost on both counts.
Excellent point. I am impressed at how well, he’s handling things even before he’s sworn in.
I love the smell of desperation first thing in the [morning/afternoon/evening].
Mailman
Nice pic of Hillary up top. Her expression reminds me of the vacuous “Banality of Evil” look on Lois Lerner’s mug when she was chatting with Congress.
What cost hiLIARy the election was the simple fact that she was damn right unelectable.