via http://ift.tt/2fENiTU:
agloriousfemalepresident:
scienceofeds:
1. Hillary was leading the polls before the election.
2. Hillary won the popular vote by >1.72 million.
3. EXIT polls do NOT match up with results in 4 key states. Hillary won according to exit polls in NC, PA, WI, and FL.
4. Trump won these with RAZOR-THIN margins. Also this. A shift of just 55,000 votes to Hillary in PA, MICH & WISC would’ve made Hillary the winner.
5. More than 20 states have faced major election hacking attempts, DHS says.
The DHS official — speaking on background because of the subject’s sensitive nature — explained that hackers of all stripes are constantly testing the digital defenses of every state’s public-facing election systems. But in 20-plus states, the agency determined that these intrusion attempts have become what DHS calls “probing of concern.”
6. Feds believe Russians hacked Florida elections-system vendor. (And remember they hacked the DNC emails).
7. Trump has lowest approval ratings of any president-elect in recent history. LOWER than Hillary according to PEW results. The only time this happened in recent history was in 2000. Gore had higher grades.
8. There were irregularities in many key states.
In Florida: Lost by 120,000. One Attorney quoted in article: “Tallahassee-based VR Systems was also allegedly hacked. The company provides electronic poll books for a number of jurisdictions which communicate in real time with each county’s voter registration system. According to the company’s web site VR Systems serves almost all of Florida’s counties and 14 other states.“
In Wisconsin: Lost by 27,000 votes. BUT: “But Clinton won only counties using all-paper ballots, the computer voting experts said. In the counties using a mix of electronic and paper-based voting systems that President Obama won in 2012, Clinton lost by 1-2 percent. In the Obama counties using all paperless machines, she lost by 10 to 15 percent”
In North Carolina: Lost by 178,000. “… what happened across the state on Election Day has become the focus of serious concern for the election integrity experts. In one Democratic epicenter, Durham County, the state’s voter registration database and e-poll books tied into it were down, prompting long lines, delays and necessitating people fill out provisional ballots. The data was also scrambled, with voter rolls in the wrong locations, people tagged as voting when they had not, and people not on lists even though they had their state registration cards. Those snafus were reported to election protection call centers.”
“… if it was the latter, who was behind the cyberattack? These questions must be answered immediately, especially if the answers lead to questions about the integrity of the election process in other jurisdictions.
In Michigan: Lost by 11,000 votes. “Election night’s unofficial returns found Trump ahead by 11,000 votes. But 87,000 ballots did not show a presidential vote, the election integrity team said, which broke a 49,000 empty-vote record from previous presidential election”
In Pennsylvania: Lost by 68,000 votes. “… The concern is that 16 counties are still using aging countywide tabulators which Finnish computer security specialist Harry Hursti has shown can be easily hacked to change the reported results. These computers use old versions of Microsoft operating systems, which have security vulnerabilities that have never been fixed.”
9. Unsurprisingly, in many places, HILLARY won in counties using paper votes but lost in those using electronic in key states. For example: North Carolina and Wisconsin .
10. Russia confirms it has been in touch with Trump throughout the campaign.
And there’s so much more. Like the fact that manipulating vote count in just a dozen areas in few key states would be enough.
THERE IS STILL TIME TO AUDIT THE ELECTION.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
MOST IMPORTANTLY: call the Dept of Justice comment line at 202 353 1555 and leave a message asking to #AuditTheVote due to Russian interference. DO IT RIGHT NOW, PLEASE. CALLS ARE BEING TALLIED.
DEMAND AUDIT IN NC, MI, PA, and WI.
SIGN THE PETITION.
Also: Follow @AndreaChalupa and @sarahkendzior on Twitter.
Your truly,
Concerned Canadian
I don’t want to in any way discourage anyone from signing the petition or - perhaps more importantly - questioning things that appear not to make sense. I do, however, want to correct/clarify some things on the following points:
3. First off, this is one guy’s work on the Internet. A guy who links to (and is linked by) a notorious conspiracy site that insists, based on the work of TDMS, that a whole mess of votes for Bernie were flipped to Clinton using “maliciously coded voting machines and central tabulators.” Ninety seconds on Google also reveals that the man behind TDMS also went to court to contest a speeding ticket on the grounds that it was unconstitutional, which was very close to being literally laughed out of court in the decision. He’s also on the record as being a cranky Vermont resident who doesn’t like his local fire department very much. He is not on the record, so far as I could find, as having any expertise in statistics, polling, political science, nor constitutional law. Which could explain why he doesn’t mention that there were also considerable exit poll discrepancies in 2004, so much so that some people with actual expertise looked into it. CalTech/MIT found no evidence of electoral tampering. Neither did WaPo. Turns out, ridiculously wrong exit polls are a thing.
8 & 9. Alternet is not a reliable source of anything. It goes in the bin with all those other fake news sources that we’re supposed to stop looking at if we want to have any idea of what’s going on in the world. While it doesn’t go as far as some sites, it also doesn’t fact check, so please, never cite it as evidence of anything. But regarding the reports of voter fraud, first of all, there is a difference between voting machine vendors’ sites being hacked and voting machines being hacked. It was actually registration information being hacked, not voting systems. Similarly, attempted hacks are not the same as successful hacks. Regarding paper versus electronic balloting, the issue is not the ability to hack the machines (which are, in effect, air-gapped) so much as the lack of comprehensive paper trail. Which is not to say that it doesn’t present a massive vulnerability. But the thing is, and this is a major point - every campaign has a massive army of lawyers watching out for anything suspicious. If they’re not raising alarm bells, it’s a safe bet that Random Screaming People of the Internet are not the first ones to look over the details.
10. Actually, Russia did not say it was in contact with the campaign. One Russian diplomat and a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said that. Which should be taken with a grain of potato vodka, because if we can’t trust things that Russia says, we can’t trust things that Russia says just because they reinforce our theories.
So here’s the gist of my point: a lot of these sources are very unreliable and a lot of the “reporting” is misleading. And if anyone were going to find evidence of voter fraud, doesn’t it make sense that pollsters who spend their lives poring over this kind of stuff and/or the mighty band of lawyers for the campaign would be the ones to do it?
I’ll let this article from The Nation, a reliable source, close out the post:
“The sad truth is that we do have creaky, antiquated election infrastructure, voters don’t have a lot of faith in the system, and there’s really no good way to identify potential fraud. But wishing that our exit polls were up to the task doesn’t make them so, and parsing preliminary data posted on CNN.com is just a fool’s errand.”
Look, if you want to encourage a recount, that’s your right. And definitely do question everything, but answer those questions with reliable data and analysis, not the rantings of the Pajama People.

agloriousfemalepresident:
scienceofeds:
1. Hillary was leading the polls before the election.
2. Hillary won the popular vote by >1.72 million.
3. EXIT polls do NOT match up with results in 4 key states. Hillary won according to exit polls in NC, PA, WI, and FL.
4. Trump won these with RAZOR-THIN margins. Also this. A shift of just 55,000 votes to Hillary in PA, MICH & WISC would’ve made Hillary the winner.
5. More than 20 states have faced major election hacking attempts, DHS says.
The DHS official — speaking on background because of the subject’s sensitive nature — explained that hackers of all stripes are constantly testing the digital defenses of every state’s public-facing election systems. But in 20-plus states, the agency determined that these intrusion attempts have become what DHS calls “probing of concern.”
6. Feds believe Russians hacked Florida elections-system vendor. (And remember they hacked the DNC emails).
7. Trump has lowest approval ratings of any president-elect in recent history. LOWER than Hillary according to PEW results. The only time this happened in recent history was in 2000. Gore had higher grades.
8. There were irregularities in many key states.
In Florida: Lost by 120,000. One Attorney quoted in article: “Tallahassee-based VR Systems was also allegedly hacked. The company provides electronic poll books for a number of jurisdictions which communicate in real time with each county’s voter registration system. According to the company’s web site VR Systems serves almost all of Florida’s counties and 14 other states.“
In Wisconsin: Lost by 27,000 votes. BUT: “But Clinton won only counties using all-paper ballots, the computer voting experts said. In the counties using a mix of electronic and paper-based voting systems that President Obama won in 2012, Clinton lost by 1-2 percent. In the Obama counties using all paperless machines, she lost by 10 to 15 percent”
In North Carolina: Lost by 178,000. “… what happened across the state on Election Day has become the focus of serious concern for the election integrity experts. In one Democratic epicenter, Durham County, the state’s voter registration database and e-poll books tied into it were down, prompting long lines, delays and necessitating people fill out provisional ballots. The data was also scrambled, with voter rolls in the wrong locations, people tagged as voting when they had not, and people not on lists even though they had their state registration cards. Those snafus were reported to election protection call centers.”
“… if it was the latter, who was behind the cyberattack? These questions must be answered immediately, especially if the answers lead to questions about the integrity of the election process in other jurisdictions.
In Michigan: Lost by 11,000 votes. “Election night’s unofficial returns found Trump ahead by 11,000 votes. But 87,000 ballots did not show a presidential vote, the election integrity team said, which broke a 49,000 empty-vote record from previous presidential election”
In Pennsylvania: Lost by 68,000 votes. “… The concern is that 16 counties are still using aging countywide tabulators which Finnish computer security specialist Harry Hursti has shown can be easily hacked to change the reported results. These computers use old versions of Microsoft operating systems, which have security vulnerabilities that have never been fixed.”
9. Unsurprisingly, in many places, HILLARY won in counties using paper votes but lost in those using electronic in key states. For example: North Carolina and Wisconsin .
10. Russia confirms it has been in touch with Trump throughout the campaign.
And there’s so much more. Like the fact that manipulating vote count in just a dozen areas in few key states would be enough.
THERE IS STILL TIME TO AUDIT THE ELECTION.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
MOST IMPORTANTLY: call the Dept of Justice comment line at 202 353 1555 and leave a message asking to #AuditTheVote due to Russian interference. DO IT RIGHT NOW, PLEASE. CALLS ARE BEING TALLIED.
DEMAND AUDIT IN NC, MI, PA, and WI.
SIGN THE PETITION.
Also: Follow @AndreaChalupa and @sarahkendzior on Twitter.
Your truly,
Concerned Canadian
I don’t want to in any way discourage anyone from signing the petition or - perhaps more importantly - questioning things that appear not to make sense. I do, however, want to correct/clarify some things on the following points:
3. First off, this is one guy’s work on the Internet. A guy who links to (and is linked by) a notorious conspiracy site that insists, based on the work of TDMS, that a whole mess of votes for Bernie were flipped to Clinton using “maliciously coded voting machines and central tabulators.” Ninety seconds on Google also reveals that the man behind TDMS also went to court to contest a speeding ticket on the grounds that it was unconstitutional, which was very close to being literally laughed out of court in the decision. He’s also on the record as being a cranky Vermont resident who doesn’t like his local fire department very much. He is not on the record, so far as I could find, as having any expertise in statistics, polling, political science, nor constitutional law. Which could explain why he doesn’t mention that there were also considerable exit poll discrepancies in 2004, so much so that some people with actual expertise looked into it. CalTech/MIT found no evidence of electoral tampering. Neither did WaPo. Turns out, ridiculously wrong exit polls are a thing.
8 & 9. Alternet is not a reliable source of anything. It goes in the bin with all those other fake news sources that we’re supposed to stop looking at if we want to have any idea of what’s going on in the world. While it doesn’t go as far as some sites, it also doesn’t fact check, so please, never cite it as evidence of anything. But regarding the reports of voter fraud, first of all, there is a difference between voting machine vendors’ sites being hacked and voting machines being hacked. It was actually registration information being hacked, not voting systems. Similarly, attempted hacks are not the same as successful hacks. Regarding paper versus electronic balloting, the issue is not the ability to hack the machines (which are, in effect, air-gapped) so much as the lack of comprehensive paper trail. Which is not to say that it doesn’t present a massive vulnerability. But the thing is, and this is a major point - every campaign has a massive army of lawyers watching out for anything suspicious. If they’re not raising alarm bells, it’s a safe bet that Random Screaming People of the Internet are not the first ones to look over the details.
10. Actually, Russia did not say it was in contact with the campaign. One Russian diplomat and a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said that. Which should be taken with a grain of potato vodka, because if we can’t trust things that Russia says, we can’t trust things that Russia says just because they reinforce our theories.
So here’s the gist of my point: a lot of these sources are very unreliable and a lot of the “reporting” is misleading. And if anyone were going to find evidence of voter fraud, doesn’t it make sense that pollsters who spend their lives poring over this kind of stuff and/or the mighty band of lawyers for the campaign would be the ones to do it?
I’ll let this article from The Nation, a reliable source, close out the post:
“The sad truth is that we do have creaky, antiquated election infrastructure, voters don’t have a lot of faith in the system, and there’s really no good way to identify potential fraud. But wishing that our exit polls were up to the task doesn’t make them so, and parsing preliminary data posted on CNN.com is just a fool’s errand.”
Look, if you want to encourage a recount, that’s your right. And definitely do question everything, but answer those questions with reliable data and analysis, not the rantings of the Pajama People.
