Hillary Election Fraud Discovered

[Wayward Son]

Well, it's started.

According to the Christian Times, thousands of fraudulent ballots, filled out for Hillary Clinton, were discovered in the swing state of Ohio.

I'm sure we're going to hear a number of these stories in the weeks to come.

The question is, how can we fight this fraud?  How can we insure the legitimacy of our elections when many people, including one of the leading candidates, is expecting fraud and dirty tricks to influence the final count?

It's worrisome.  And I have no good answer.

[Fenring]

I don't know about the validity of this claim, but if you think that's bad just think about how easy it is to rig electronic voting. It's already been presented to Congress in sworn testimony that it's both easy and untraceable to rig an electronic voting machine, that there is no security to prevent this, and that without deep digging it would not raise any alarms.

[Wayward Son]

Oh, I know.  I've speculated that that might be the reason Trump won the primary.  (After all, he's said he's a good buddy with Putin, and the Russians have already hacked into at least one electoral computer.  )

The simplest answer would be to require these computers to print out a paper copy of each vote after it was cast, and to have each voter check it to make sure it was correct.  A paper trail like that would make it almost impossible for a hacker to significantly change the outcome.

But, of course, it wouldn't help with this type of fraud.

[Fenring]

Oh, I know.  I've speculated that that might be the reason Trump won the primary.  (After all, he's said he's a good buddy with Putin, and the Russians have already hacked into at least one electoral computer.  )

Are the voting machines connected to the internet? I don't actually know the answer to this, but I assumed they weren't. A foreign hacker could only access a machine if it was connected. I believe the testimony I'm thinking of was about going into individual machines to alter their sorting algorithms (i.e. to assign votes for one candidate to another).

[AI Wessex]

Snopes is your friend:

On 30 September 2016, the Christian Times Newspaper (CTN) web site published an article reporting that "tens of thousands" of pre-marked ballots cast for Hillary Clinton and other Democratic candidates had been discovered stored in an Ohio warehouse:

   

Election officials in Franklin County, Ohio are reportedly stumped over what one maintenance worker found in a dilapidated downtown Columbus warehouse earlier this week.

    According to sources, Randall Prince, a Columbus-area electrical worker, was doing a routine check of his companies wiring and electrical systems when he stumbled across approximately one dozen black, sealed ballot boxes filled with thousands of Franklin County votes for Hillary Clinton and other Democrat candidates.

    Clinton campaign’s likely goal was to slip the fake ballot boxes in with the real ballot boxes when they went to official election judges on November 8th.

There is no truth to the above-quoted story.

Also, the Ohio  Secretary of State:

Move over, Snopes, there's a new conspiracy theory debunker on the case.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted issued a press release Tuesday refuting an online article claiming "tens of thousands" of Hillary Clinton ballots were found in a Franklin County warehouse.

The article, published Sept. 30 by Christian Times Newspaper, featured a photo of boxes allegedly full of Clinton ballots. Actually, the photo was taken in 2015 during the U.K. election.

The article stated the "likely goal was to slip the fake ballot boxes in with the real ballot boxes when they went to official election judges on November 8th."

Husted said the post is both false and intentionally misleading and, given the source, offends him as a Christian.

"A Christian myself, I take offense to reading such unbelievable lies from a publication alleging Christian ties," Husted said. "No one from this so-called-news outlet bothered to call the Franklin County Board of Elections or the Ohio Secretary of State's office to verify any facts. It was a deliberate attempt to deceive and mislead. We already get enough of that from the candidates. Enough already."

[Seriati]

Lol, I like how the words "Ballot Box" are orientated to be parallel to the bottom of the picture rather than the boxes they are supposed to be on.

I think its naïve to believe that vote manipulation doesn't occur, I just think it's likely to be more in the nature of manipulating the early mail in votes for people who couldn't tell you they voted, or who they voted for a couple hours later.  The electronic issue is worrisome, because there is no way it hasn't occurred to someone to do it, and there don't seem to be any reasonable controls to prevent or catch it.  It doesn't take a lot of manipulation in this era where the parties are experts on figuring which thousand votes in which district can flip a whole state.

[D.W.]

We've got electronically read paper ballots here.  Granted that means that you would need someone to contest the results, demand a hand count AND have time to wait for the results.  Not very inspiring there, but we DO have a safeguard in place in my area. (and I believe all of Michigan?)

I was also under the impression that the readers were not connected to the internet (after the first time the fear of hacking came up).  I've read a few did (still?) have wi-fi access.  The real threat for most of them would be a worker with direct access to the machines on site.

[TheDeamon]

Oh, I know.  I've speculated that that might be the reason Trump won the primary.  (After all, he's said he's a good buddy with Putin, and the Russians have already hacked into at least one electoral computer.  )

Are the voting machines connected to the internet? I don't actually know the answer to this, but I assumed they weren't. A foreign hacker could only access a machine if it was connected. I believe the testimony I'm thinking of was about going into individual machines to alter their sorting algorithms (i.e. to assign votes for one candidate to another).

I'd be highly surprised if they weren't networked together, both at the precinct and city or county levels at a minimum. And given a that most large geographically dispersed networks operate over the internet, as that is both cheaper and less expensive than setting up dedicated hardline connections for something only occasionally used....

[D.W.]

Cost is the only reason that type of system isn't already eradicated TheDeamon.  A lot of areas can't afford to buy (another) new system.

I may be wrong on this, they MAY have rooted them out between last elections cycle and this, but I doubt it.

[AI Wessex]

The fear in 2012 in Ohio was that the software was rigged to spill a few extra votes for Romney.  That apparently didn't happen (or didn't do it's job), but a 3rd party security audit should be made of all machine software before it is used.  I'm thinking about the recent VW emissions testing fraud that was wired to produce phony results when it was used in a testing environment.  The only way to discover that is to run extensive cross-testing or examine the code, unless you can find a whistle-blower.

[TheDeamon]

We've got electronically read paper ballots here.  Granted that means that you would need someone to contest the results, demand a hand count AND have time to wait for the results.  Not very inspiring there, but we DO have a safeguard in place in my area. (and I believe all of Michigan?)

I was also under the impression that the readers were not connected to the internet (after the first time the fear of hacking came up).  I've read a few did (still?) have wi-fi access.  The real threat for most of them would be a worker with direct access to the machines on site.

Depends on the "voting machine" in question. I know Idaho has used bubblesheet scanners for decades(voter fills in the desired "bubble" with a #2 pencil). I imagine those scanners are stand-alone, as they are more electronic in nature than they are (programmable/multipurpose) computerized. They also leave a physical paper trail in multiple places. (That the person requested a ballot, the ballot itself, and that the person returned with the ballot once done making their selections. All documented on paper.)

What is being talked about however are newer iterations seeing use today. Touch screen ballots, or lower tech mouse & keyboard but still computer screen based ballots, where the ballot may or may not ever exist in a physical form. For newer systems it is entirely possible no physical ballot is ever generated, which makes physical recount impossible. It then becomes a question of how vulnerable such computerized polling places are to both external and internal attacks.

[D.W.]

Seventy-five percent of the country's votes are cast using paper ballots and even many electronic machines print a ballot so that there's a paper trail. But five states (Georgia, Delaware, Louisiana, South Carolina and New Jersey) use electronic voting machines that leave no way to audit results after the fact, according to Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, which advocates for transparency in voting machines.

From an Aug 9 article this year
http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/09/technology/voting-machine-hack-election/

[Wayward Son]

Snopes is your friend.

Yeah, AI, the validity of this fraud was easy to dispel, especially with the second-rate photoshop on the picture.  But it still doesn't answer how we can fight these frauds.

I'm sure there will be more fraudulent stories about how Clinton and the Democrats are committing voter fraud.  Some will be harder to spot.  How will we discern when a story is a fraud?  And how do we convince those who believe these fraudulent accusations that they aren't true, and the election was legitimate?

And the worst-case scenario, what if those convinced of voter fraud decide to take it into their own hands to rectify these fraudulent frauds?  Perhaps at the encouragement of their candidate?

For these questions I have no good answers.

[Fenring]

I'm sure there will be more fraudulent stories about how Clinton and the Democrats are committing voter fraud.  Some will be harder to spot.  How will we discern when a story is a fraud?

There has already been some reporting on the exit polls of some of the Dem primaries, as contrasted with the reported vote tallies, where the exit polls were several standard deviations away from expected error range from the reported results. Even this apparently serious discrepancy hasn't cause much of anything to happen, and so short of a blatant smoking gun I doubt you have anything to worry about.

[NobleHunter]

On a somewhat partisan forum that I visit, there's been a whole bunch of threads detailing almost every instance of voter irregularity and trumpeting them as proof the Democrats are trying to steal the election. Nevermind any given instance involves  only ten or twenty votes or registrations. They never seem to dwell on how many votes they had to check to find the bad ones, when they bother to mention it all.

[Fenring]

On a somewhat partisan forum that I visit, there's been a whole bunch of threads detailing almost every instance of voter irregularity and trumpeting them as proof the Democrats are trying to steal the election. Nevermind any given instance involves  only ten or twenty votes or registrations. They never seem to dwell on how many votes they had to check to find the bad ones, when they bother to mention it all.

Are you talking about the primaries? The independent sources that conducted some of the exit polls used surprisingly large sample sizes.

[NobleHunter]

No, this seems like set up for November. I don't really pay much attention because the sources are generally dubious.

[D.W.]

How will we discern when a story is a fraud?

You play the odds.
If there is a story,
it is a fraud.

[Fenring]

How will we discern when a story is a fraud?

You play the odds.
If there is a story,
it is a fraud.

Hehe.

[AI Wessex]

Snopes is your friend.

Yeah, AI, the validity of this fraud was easy to dispel, especially with the second-rate photoshop on the picture.  But it still doesn't answer how we can fight these frauds.

I'm sure there will be more fraudulent stories about how Clinton and the Democrats are committing voter fraud.  Some will be harder to spot.  How will we discern when a story is a fraud?  And how do we convince those who believe these fraudulent accusations that they aren't true, and the election was legitimate?

And the worst-case scenario, what if those convinced of voter fraud decide to take it into their own hands to rectify these fraudulent frauds?  Perhaps at the encouragement of their candidate?

For these questions I have no good answers.

I tend to believe that voter fraud in general is in the noise range, but like so many other things, the fear of it will mobilize people who will actually cause the vote tallies to be skewed through voter challenges and intimidation on election day at polling stations.  Trump has called for people to do that in a thinly veiled attempt to lower voter turnout among blacks and hispanics. 

In other words, voter intimidation is a far greater threat to people's democratic franchise than fraud, but direct disenfranchisement in states like Florida, where up to 10% of the potential voting population who are ex-felons are prohibited from voting, is the greatest threat of all.  Several months ago I surveyed the states with the highest numbers/percentages of people whose voting privileges had been revoked, and they all were in the south, all heavily Republican and the people whose vote was taken away very disproportionately black.  In one state (Alabama?) you could lose your vote if convicted of a misdemeanor regarding public indecency (IIRC). The state sponsored disenfranchisement problem is many orders of magnitude more serious and far more despicable than actual vote fraud.

[AI Wessex]

How will we discern when a story is a fraud?

You play the odds.
If there is a story,
it is a fraud.

QFT

[TheDrake]

Trump is already positioning himself to claim that the only reason he lost was because of voter fraud. Or accidental immigration?

HOLT: Mr. Trump, very quickly, same question. Will you accept the outcome as the will of the voters? TRUMP: I want to make America great again. We are a nation that is seriously troubled. We're losing our jobs. People are pouring into our country.

The other day, we were deporting 800 people. And perhaps they passed the wrong button, they pressed the wrong button, or perhaps worse than that, it was corruption, but these people that we were going to deport for good reason ended up becoming citizens. Ended up becoming citizens. And it was 800. And now it turns out it might be 1,800, and they don't even know.

I'm just sorry this particular story about fake ballots got debunked too quickly so we didn't get to see Trump retweet it.

[cherrypoptart]

That story may have been fake but the potential for massive voter fraud is still real. I'm surprised the media actually ran this story:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/1183dbe4-0587-3a5b-93c7-d76b8489b175/ss_immigrants-find-noncitizen.html#mycomments

"Abdel showed up at his local Pennsylvania motor vehicle office to take his driver’s license test — and walked out having registered to vote, even though he is not a citizen. He said his command of English isn’t good and the computer system was unclear, but he somehow managed to sign up even though he knew he shouldn’t. Then there was Angelo, who figured he could vote because he joined the U.S. military, even though he wasn’t a citizen. He, too, signed up at the Pennsylvania motor vehicle bureau and registered as a Democrat. He then voted nearly every year from 2001 through 2014. He finally wrote to Allegheny County asking to be stricken from the rolls, saying he had been ineligible all along."

[Greg Davidson]

cherry,

Did you follow the trial in Kansas a month ago where voting fraud advocate Kris Kobach had to meet the standards of evidence in an actual court of law? 

The trial had a significance that extends far beyond the Jayhawk state. One of the fundamental questions in the debate over alleged voter fraud—whether a substantial number of non-citizens are, in fact, registering to vote—was one of two issues to be determined in the Kansas proceedings. (The second was whether there was a less burdensome solution than what Kansas had adopted.) That made the trial a telling opportunity to remove the voter fraud claims from the charged, and largely proof-free, realms of political campaigns and cable news shout-fests and examine them under the exacting strictures of the rules of evidence.

That's precisely what occurred and according to [Judge] Robinson, an appointee of George W. Bush, the proof that voter fraud is widespread was utterly lacking. As the judge put it, "the court finds no credible evidence that a substantial number of non-citizens registered to vote" even under the previous law, which Kobach had claimed was weak.

https://psmag.com/social-justice/how-kansas-crushed-kobach

But this isn't the first time that this issue has come up. In the Bush Administration, the Attorney General and 8 other senior justice department officials resigned because they had been firing states attorney generals who refused to fabricate false evidence of voter fraud.

Why does this matter?

As Secretary of State of Kansas, Kobach implemented some of the strictest voter ID laws in the United States, and has fought to remove nearly 20,000 registered voters from the state's voter rolls.[13] In June 2018, a Kansas Federal Judge found the voter ID law unconstitutional.[14] Despite considerable investigation and prosecution, Kobach secured only nine convictions for voter fraud. All were cases of double voting; most were older Republican men who had misunderstood their voting rights, and not one would have been prevented by his strict voter ID "SAFE" Act.

However, the political prize was to strip voting rights from 20,000 registered voters. Wealthier people tend to have better paperwork, and more time to deal with voter registration issues. Republicans have targeted groups that typically vote for for Democrats so that there is less competition in elections, and they have done this across the country for two decades.