USA 2016 -- vote fraud via vote-machine hacking?

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Warren D Smith

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Nov 23, 2016, 12:45:34 PM11/23/16
to electionscience
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)

Warren D Smith

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Nov 23, 2016, 12:48:56 PM11/23/16
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Warren D Smith

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Nov 23, 2016, 4:59:57 PM11/23/16
to electionscience
History repeats itself?

Posted by Greg Palest on FB:

BREAKING: Jill Stein just called, Green Party filing for recount in
#Michigan, #Wisconsin and #Pennsylvania. A tiny 50,000 vote shift will
un-Trump the Electoral College.
Jill Stein just called to say that I am the first one to be informed
that the Green Party is formally petitioning for a recount in 3
states, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Trump’s margin is less
that 11,600 in Michigan, 27,200 in Wisconsin and 68,000 in
Pennsylvania. If just a few thousand votes are found in Wisconsin and
Michigan, Hillary Clinton becomes president by 276 electoral votes
verses 264 for Trump
Stein told me “We’re filing in Wisconsin Friday because the votes were
cast on proven hack-prone machines. This has been a hack-ridden
election.” She said that it will be most difficult to recount the
machines in Pennsylvania. When asked why the democrats are not
bringing this action, Stein told this reporter that “Democrats do not
act to protect the vote even when there is dramatic evidence” of
tampering.
The Green Party told us that Stein will be represented by experienced
voting rights attorney’s John Bonifaz, Boston, MA and Robert Fitrakis,
Columbus, OH.
Stein said, “our voting system is on life support.” The presidential
candidate also said, “The Green Party will continue to be the go to
advocate for voting rights. That includes fighting vote suppression
tactics such as the Interstate Crosscheck system.”
Interstate Crosscheck is the program which wrongly purged hundreds of
thousand of minority voters in this election, according to the
investigation this reporter for Rolling Stone Magazine. For more on
the theft of the 2016 election visit thebestdemocracymoneycanbuy.com
and gregpalast.com

Warren D Smith

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Nov 23, 2016, 7:23:40 PM11/23/16
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Warren D Smith

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Nov 23, 2016, 9:01:02 PM11/23/16
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Latest: Jill Stein says we all need to send her $2 million by
Friday to carry out the election audit.

Phil Uhrich

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Nov 24, 2016, 9:02:18 PM11/24/16
to The Center for Election Science

Warren D Smith

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Nov 25, 2016, 11:12:35 AM11/25/16
to electio...@googlegroups.com
Stein keeps wanting more money, now
seems to be heading toward $10 million
asked for.

But, I guess something will actually happen now.

If the Russians really did hack the election, it is
entirely possible it will be unprovable, e.g. their
hacks could be programmed to erase themselves
afterward...

James Comey, FBI director, publicly claimed hacking
the election was impossible because US voting
machines were not on the internet. This demonstrated merely
that Comey was an imbecile. Methods were successfully demonstrated
and publicized over a decade ago to spread a virus among voting machines
with no need for internet, all that was needed was some pre-prepared person
being alone with just one machine for about 20 seconds just one time.

Warren D Smith

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Nov 26, 2016, 10:03:10 PM11/26/16
to electionscience
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/11/26/clinton-team-joins-steins-three-state-vote-recount-that-begins-in-wisconsin.html

Says that Clinton, who had NOT moved to causes
any recounts or auditing, causing Jill Stein & Green Party
to do so... is now going to help Stein with
Dem-party resources and expertise
sort of behind the scenes.

While Trump now announced this all is ridiculous.
(Of course, when he was threatening to do it beforehand...
that wasn't ridiculous.)

Phil Uhrich

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Nov 26, 2016, 10:28:28 PM11/26/16
to The Center for Election Science
Not behind the scenes. She will be legally represented. Which makes me somewhat more skeptical about who funded it. At first I thought it was a clever ploy by the GP to be on the side of the angels with the HillBots while getting a bigger email list, now I'm wondering if Clinton's donors didn't have a hand.
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN13L0TX

I would be shocked if we didn't uncover massive cheating on both sides but not enough to change the balance. The demographic trends were the same through the whole region; including MN which has 100% paper ballots and has undergone two full recounts in the last decade (2008 Senate and 2010 Governor) so anyone tempted to cheat would be less inclined to for fear of getting caught.

Interesting side note about MN. We have 3 rural congressional districts, 1, 7, and 8 that went big for Trump (>50k votes) while reelecting their Dem reps to the house. Also one suburban district, 3, that went for Clinton while reelecting it's GOP rep. She lost the other two suburban districts, and increased her margin in the 2 urban districts but the only reason she carried the state was because Evan McMullen was on the ballot here, pulling about 2% from Trump. She actually did better in Wisconsin both numerically and as a percentage. Johnson and Stein did very similarly in both states.

Warren D Smith

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Nov 26, 2016, 10:39:11 PM11/26/16
to electio...@googlegroups.com
Jill Stein raised more money for her recount effort in 1 day, than she raised
for her entire presidential campaign. By the time she is done raising money
it will probably exceed twice her campaign's funding. Maybe even 3X or more.
So obviously, she is getting funding
from other than her usual prior sources.

I hope big problems are uncovered causing reforms. But I'll not bet on
it. Clinton is publicly saying she's going to help Stein
with e.g. lawyers so it is not "behind the scenes" in the sense
it is not a secret. But it is behind the scenes in the sense that Stein
was the one who did the deed while Clinton refused.

Phil Uhrich

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Nov 27, 2016, 12:26:44 AM11/27/16
to The Center for Election Science
Still unlikely to change anything. All 3 would have to flip or WI and MI and 11 faithless electors. Not to mention the constitutional crisis we would be in if all three did flipp. I think the public would demand a recount of all states with a margin under 5% at that point, which would be NH, FL, MN, NV, ME, NC, AZ, and CO. That would never be done before 12/19.

Anyone who thinks those Trump inspired hate crimes over the past few weeks were bad should think hard about the aftermath of flipping the electoral college at this point. Every trump supporter would be in the streets.... with their guns. Stupid 2nd amendment.

Warren D Smith

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Nov 27, 2016, 11:04:58 AM11/27/16
to electio...@googlegroups.com
I agree recount unlikely to change election result.
I also agree if it did look likely to change it,
then crazy stuff might happen.
I think highly public re-examination
of election practices is good not because it will alter election,
but because it may lead to reforming those practices.

Phil Uhrich

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Nov 27, 2016, 4:29:10 PM11/27/16
to The Center for Election Science
I agree, I'm all for ditching electronic counting. Germany has a good system, based on their constitution that we wrote....
Looks like PA won't get a recount.
http://billypenn.com/2016/11/23/a-pennsylvania-recount-for-hillary-clinton-a-nightmare-scenario-explained/

Warren D Smith

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Nov 27, 2016, 11:20:59 PM11/27/16
to electio...@googlegroups.com
From Fox News 27 Nov 2016:

Trump claims he won popular vote, if "illegal" votes for Clinton are deducted
Washington – President-elect Donald Trump claimed Sunday that he not
only won the electoral vote but the popular vote as well, if the
"millions" of "illegal" votes cast for his Democratic rival, Hillary
Clinton, in the Nov. 8 election are deducted from the tally.

"In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won
the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted
illegally," wrote Trump on Twitter, referring to the vote recount
effort in three states being headed by Green Party presidential
candidate Jill Stein.

In the Nov. 8 election, Trump apparently garnered at least 270
electoral votes, which technically is all that is required to win the
presidency regardless of whether or not a candidate wins the popular
vote.

------


WDS comment:
Trump's claim would be correct if (1) about 4 million
people voted illegally and (2) their votes split 80:20 re Clinton:Trump.
If so, this would be by far the largest electoral fraud of the last 60
years of US history.

If Trump wanted to convince me of this theory, however, it would
help if he had produced a shred of evidence for either. In particular,
just find, say, 1/5000 fraction of those illegal voters, only 800
needed, as a start.

In any event, Trump has just contended the election was massively
fraudulent, via a tremendous conspiracy amounting to about 3% of
all the voters in the country. In contrast, the percent
of the US population in prison, although the
highest in the world, is below 1%.

And the size of the fraud Trump claims existed,
was roughly 100X larger than needed for Clinton (if it
were deleted) to win the presidency.
Neither Stein nor Clinton has yet made
any contention of any fraud, but Trump has.

Under these circumstances, it is
rather odd that Stein (with a sotto voce role from Clinton)
is the one calling for recounting and auditing.

Warren D Smith

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Nov 27, 2016, 11:20:59 PM11/27/16
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Warren D Smith

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Nov 28, 2016, 3:51:52 PM11/28/16
to electionscience
http://showmethevotes.org/2016/11/28/exit-poll-results-machine-vote-counts-were-altered-in-s-e-kansas/


this is the blog of a statistician who is concerned re voting
manipulation in Kansas, discussing her exit poll.

Phil Uhrich

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Nov 29, 2016, 3:02:54 AM11/29/16
to The Center for Election Science
Yes, she also did some analysis on the Dem Primary.  She commented on the best work I have seen regarding the subject: 
And the authors of that study used some of her work in response to criticism.

She was, of course, completely ignored in the rush to coronate Hillary. 
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