The following is mostly excerpted from an email sent out
by "Democracy for America." A hypothesis is
that Trump won the election due to hacked voting machines
and/or computers in swing states. Possibly, the Russian
government supplied hacks. Crazy theory?
Any evidence for it?
Well, allegedly, precincts using computerized machines voted
7% extra for Trump in some key swing states.
Which would have done the job.
See
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/activists-urge-hillary-clinton-to-challenge-election-results.html
for a report on the rumors.
What to do about it?
Well, try to find out whether it is true, and
what the un-altered vote was.
By auditing the elections in those states.
I for one would be interested in seeing what that would find.
Essentially, no such audit ever happens.
Which is absurd. They should be done every election.
When Kerry lost to Bush in 2004, there were many
shenanigans of obviously intentional election manipulation going on
especially in the key state Ohio. Kerry allegedly had big money and
armies of lawyers all ready to complain, but he refused to do so.
Not one peep came from Kerry about all those shoddy practices.
In my opinion this was unfortunate because if he had decided to
make a stink, then a great deal of light would have been publicly
shed about all that, perhaps leading to reform.
Instead, there WAS an Ohio audit anyhow, because the Green & Liberarian
parties called and paid for it. That was the good news. The bad news
was, Ohio just pretended to do an audit and broke their own laws
blatantly in not actually doing one. E.g. as step 1, by law,
a RANDOM set of precincts were to be chosen and then audited;
step 2, if enough discrepancies found then larger audit, etc.
Actually: a NONRANDOM, pre-arranged before the election,
set of precincts was chosen for step 1.
The Greens and Libertarians screamed and
complained and nobody listened. Ultimately this was all blamed
on a few low-level employees in Ohio election establishment,
you know, a few bad apples, rogue employees -- who
ended up jailed as a result. If there was any more obvious case
of "scapegoating" anyone can think of, let me know.
It was utterly absurd.
So now what? Well, I predict Hillary Clinton will
follow in Kerry's footsteps and refuse to make a peep.
In any case, the DFA propaganda excerpt follows:
------------------------------------
Last night, a report by New York magazine revealed that "Hillary
Clinton is being urged by a group of prominent computer scientists and
election lawyers to call for a recount in three swing states won by
Donald Trump."
CNN, The Huffington Post, The Guardian and several other news outlets
quickly picked up the story -- though FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver
and Nate Cohn from the New York Times expressed skepticism.
What no one can dispute is that Hillary Clinton is now leading Donald
Trump in the popular vote by 1.7 million votes. And once California
finishes its count, her lead could exceed more than 2 million votes.
Unfortunately, the popular vote is meaningless in our Electoral
College system. Trump is winning the Electoral College vote thanks to
very narrow leads in key swing states such as Wisconsin (27,000 votes)
and Pennsylvania (68,000 votes). And two weeks after the election,
Michigan is still too close to call.
Voters in states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan cast paper
ballots that are counted by electronic machines. Fortunately, these
machines can be audited to ensure that the results are reported
correctly.
Given the high stakes of this election -- and how incredibly close the
vote is in crucial states -- it's essential that the American people
have confidence the election was fairly won. That's why Democracy for
America is joining the call for key swing states to audit the vote.
An audit would not be a full recount, but a statistically valid sample
that will prove whether the actual votes match the reported totals. If
there's something wrong, we'll have evidence to take action -- before
the Electoral College meets in December.
Time is running out: Sign the "Audit the Vote" petition to demand
swing states audit the presidential election before the results are
certified and the Electoral College meets on December 19.
I've heard from many DFA members in the last week who shared their
concerns with me about the reliability of the election results. It's
clear that voters are worried -- and we have a responsibility to
address their concerns.
With that concern in mind, two leading elections experts, Ron Rivest
and Phillip Stark, made an urgent call to audit the vote in the USA
Today late last week:
It does not take much technology to conduct these audits: dice (to
select random ballots), a pencil and paper, and access to the paper
ballots. The calculations are simple addition and subtraction. They
could be done by a fifth-grader.No programming would be required.
This is an assurance of democracy our nation can afford and should
perform routinely. Electronic-only voting systems should be replaced
with systems that generate a paper trail, and election results should
be audited against the paper trail to ensure that election outcomes
are correct.
There is still time to audit this election -- barely. States only have
until December 13 to give their final results to the Electoral
College.
--------------------------------------------------------
Warren D. Smith
http://RangeVoting.org <-- add your endorsement (by clicking
"endorse" as 1st step)