Clinton Urged To Challenge Election Results Due To Possible Hacking [Update] (cnn.com)

Popcorn time! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-11-23 03:22 · Score: 5, Funny

Here we go, time to sit back and watch the show that is titled "America"

Re:Popcorn time! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-11-23 03:58 · Score: 3, Insightful

Time to watch both sides put their fingers in their ears and yell "LA LA LA LA I can't hear you! This article means what I want it to mean!"
Re:Popcorn time! by Geoffrey.landis · 2016-11-23 04:01 · Score: 5, Insightful

It's worth noting that if you actually read the article, he doesn't say that the ballots actually were hacked: in fact, what he says is "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." What he suggests is that it would be valuable to do the testing to verify: to "help allay doubt and give voters justified confidence that the results are accurate."
From this point of view, it does make sense: "trust but verify". It also makes sense to do something he doesn't suggest, which is to break down some of the electronic voting machines and inspect the code for malware (he only suggests comparing the paper trail to the electronic count, not looking at the machines that don't have a paper trail.)

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Re:Popcorn time! by oh_my_080980980 · 2016-11-23 04:04 · Score: 4, Informative

FTA: "Their group told Podesta and Elias that while they had not found any evidence of hacking, the pattern needs to be looked at by an independent review."
Re:Popcorn time! by squiggleslash · 2016-11-23 04:25 · Score: 5, Insightful

I agree, and I suspect it would be both a waste of time and money, and counter productive, for Clinton to challenge the results because of that. From Clinton's point of view, there's no upside: the likely result of a challenge is that the results will stay the same, resulting in her being portrayed as a "sore loser" (see Al Gore, who had far more legitimate reasons to demand recounts in Florida, but was demonized for it), and Trump's legitimacy being entrenched in the public mind.
The only person whose interests would be served by an audit would be Trump. I just don't see it as likely he'll ask for one.
I think this is a dead end, much as I'd like to see Trump's inauguration cancelled.

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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Re:Popcorn time! by I'm+New+Around+Here · 2016-11-23 04:29 · Score: 3, Interesting

It also makes sense to do something he doesn't suggest, which is to break down some of the electronic voting machines and inspect the code for malware (he only suggests comparing the paper trail to the electronic count, not looking at the machines that don't have a paper trail.)
The thing for me is that I voted on a paper ballot, which then went into a machine that counted my votes. I have no idea if that machine "switched" any of my choices, or if it recorded each one accurately. There were reports of that happening at places, so this isn't much different than using individual electronic voting machines.

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Re:Popcorn time! by sed+quid+in+infernos · 2016-11-23 04:37 · Score: 4, Insightful

Actually, you've stated it exactly wrong: the counties with the differences were not "demographically similar." When you control for demographics, the difference in voting patterns disappears. See also https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/... and https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/....
Re:Popcorn time! by msauve · 2016-11-23 05:03 · Score: 5, Informative

If you actually read, and try to track back to the source material, the summary is highly inaccurate. Take this claim:

After examining results in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin computer scientists have discovered Clinton averaged 7% worse in counties with e voting machines vs. counties with only paper or optical scan ballots.
Where's that come from? A CNN article which doesn't provide a citation to anything which supports that claim, not even NYmag, which seems to be the original source for it. That article is more specific, saying

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.

Going further, the one name given in both articles, J. Alex Halderman, in the post at the other link in the summary, says the article was inaccurate:

You may have read at NYMag... That article, which includes somebody else's description of my views, incorrectly describes the reasons manually checking ballots is an essential security safeguard (and includes some incorrect numbers, to boot).
... and goes on to give reasons for checking ballots, with absolutely no mention of the statistical anomalies claimed.

Furthermore, examining the above "7%" claim, the Halderman article has a map which shows that all counties in Michigan and Wisconsin use paper ballots. So, there can be no basis for the claim that there's a difference between electronic and paper ballot counties in Wisconsin (or Michigan)!

And, no info on methodology back up the claim - you can't directly compare two different counties in two different states (or even the same state) and expect them to have equivalent vote proportions. If such comparisons were made, were they against previous votes in the same counties? How are they comparing votes in Pennsylvania counties with electronic voting against Michigan and Wisconsin counties? Or are they just using a difference between polls and actual vote totals? Seems the polls were wrong in lots of places, and to try and base any statistical claims on them seems to be a case of garbage-in-garbage-out.

Finally, if as stated the concern is with electronic voting machines, why would they call for recounts in Michigan and Wisconsin, which use paper ballots?

It just defies logic and sense. Is this just fake news which has found its way onto CNN via NYMag?

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"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Re:Popcorn time! by CaptainDork · 2016-11-23 05:29 · Score: 5, Informative

... that the polls were systematically wrong ...

Already been covered:
Clinton was blindsided by poll-shy, white middle-class, mostly women, voters in typically blue states that she ignored because she assumed they were in the "win" column, when, actually, they were in the Rust Belt.
The real 'shy Trump' vote - how 53% of white women pushed him to victory.

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It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Re: Popcorn time! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-11-23 05:42 · Score: 2, Insightful

Please do look into it, I implore you. Not because I think it would change the outcome, but because I believe it would only expose vote tampering and fraud on the democrats' end. Which will only serve to embarrass them further, since they still lost.
Now wait for Hillary or the democrats to release statements that they do not wish for it to be looked into.
Re:Popcorn time! by haruchai · 2016-11-23 06:09 · Score: 4, Informative

"Given how unpopular Trump is with half the nation"
Trouble is Clinton is equally unpopular, perhaps even more so than Trump

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Re:Popcorn time! by Verdatum · 2016-11-23 06:23 · Score: 2

It's real news that this urge has been made, but the way things are summarized is somewhere between weak and fake sensationalizing. The real story is "we should probably recount and investigate even though it almost certainly won't change a thing or come up with any fraud" which is too boring for decent headlines.
Re:Popcorn time! by Talderas · 2016-11-23 06:27 · Score: 2

Vote switching complaints are usually with voting machines and can be readily explained by user error and poor user interface design. The machines I used to vote at had a display which had physical buttons along the side to correspond with various options for the measures. I can easily see how someone who isn't paying attention to what they are doing could press one button thinking they were voting one way and end up pressing the button for the wrong option. It would be impossible to audit this user error as the user is going to claim the machine switched their vote because their intent did not match the output they were given. You can't actively monitor users to verify this because doing so would be a violation of voting laws. What you can audit is the machine software and hardware specs to verify how the outcome could be generated.

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Re: Popcorn time! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-11-23 06:56 · Score: 5, Insightful

Well if the alt-left didn't scream at everyone calling them all racist misogynistic cis-scum ultra Hitlers 2.0 for the past year, then maybe she'd of won.
Re:Popcorn time! by NetNed · 2016-11-23 07:01 · Score: 3, Interesting

Most precincts in Michigan do hand counts at the end of the night. Kinda odd that a researcher at U of M doesn't know that.
Re:Popcorn time! by Gr8Apes · 2016-11-23 07:15 · Score: 2

Simple math, more people dislike Trump than Clinton as he got fewer votes.
My personal opinion is that electronic voting machines without paper trails are invalid as they cannot be validated. Voting is too important to not have a secondary validation method possible, and a recount of paper is about the only way that can conclusively be done. I don't have a problem with the voting machine printing out paper and handing that in, and allowing the machine to send off "early" results at the end of the voting period. But the paper is absolute, and should be validated on at least a percentage basis in all elections. Anything less invites fraud.

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The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Re:Popcorn time! by squiggleslash · 2016-11-23 07:27 · Score: 4, Interesting

She really is that unpopular. Look, even if you presume the popular vote is the right tracker of popularity (hard, because people decide their votes based upon the EC system), she's only 2% more "liked" (or 2% less disliked) than a crazy narcissistic posterchild for the 0.1% who keeps spouting fascist rhetoric.
Trump's negative campaign against her is merely a few years old. Clinton's opponents have been running a smear campaign against her for 25 years, and after a while, some of the mud sticks, no matter how unfair. Also she's a neo-conservative who pals around with Henry Kissenger, and is associated with international trade treaties widely - if unfairly - associated with the decline of US industry*. Her husband, who she's assumed to be close to, spent a significant amount of time reinventing the Democratic Party to be less concerned with social justice, neutering welfare, and introducing draconian "law and order" laws that devastated communities.
So, she's not popular with the left, and according to the right she's a murdering real estate fraudster who runs secret email servers so she can hide her secret ISIS plot to kill Heroic American Gamers in Benghazi.
Why would you think she's popular?
* Footnote: that decline actually dates back to Reagan, but people always think the bad stuff happened in the short term - witness the amnesia about how high gas prices were during Bush's eight years, for example. The novelization of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, Primary Colors, actually has him winning over his future campaign manager when he makes a speech to some out of work factory workers, telling them he can't bring back those jobs, that they're pretty much permanently moved overseas at this point, but that he'll fight every day to create new jobs for them.

To bring this closer to home as we're all nerds here, Commodore, which went bankrupt in the early nineties, was widely criticized for its policy of domestic computer manufacturing, virtually everyone else was hiring companies in the far east to manufacture their computers for them, with only superficial assembly in the US, if any.

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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Re: Popcorn time! by skids · 2016-11-23 07:29 · Score: 5, Interesting

I'd like to see it looked into, but unlike you I won't propagandize on some fantasy of what the results say. I just think statistically significant routine random audits should be performed as a matter of course, and am interested in the academic side of things.
The Clinton campaign has to walk a fine line here because as a stakeholder, they are the people in a position to petition to get the audits done should it involve the courts. They are damned if they do, because it may be the case (depending on the laws in said states) that they have to talk out two sides of their mouth, saying they think the recount might change something to the courts, so they have grounds, but saying it won't to the public so as not to create a commotion. They are damned if they don't, by people like you (I'd point out if there was shenanigans in the primary it is just as likely Republicans thought Bernie was more of a challenge in the general than Clinton, and they did the deed.) Also die-hards in the party won't like it if they do not pursue this.
We can't look to Trump to ask for a recount, as he has nothing to gain from it (i.e. he lost nothing) and thus may lack legal standing. If one of the third parties can say that this could tip them from having met the threshold for ballot access in that state for future elections, they could initiate the recount (Nader made his campaign useful in this respect ISTR at points in the past.)

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Someone had to do it.
Re:Popcorn time! by plopez · 2016-11-23 07:40 · Score: 2

Diebold would be happy to program one up for you!

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Re:Popcorn time! by Lisandro · 2016-11-23 07:53 · Score: 4, Informative

If you actually read, and try to track back to the source material, the summary is highly inaccurate.

There's been a lot of this going around in Slashdot lately and, frankly, it's starting to get annoying.
Re:Popcorn time! by jcr · 2016-11-23 08:18 · Score: 2

For month's I've been thinking that Trump could win the election only if the electronic voting machines were hacked.
Or, just maybe, he won because Hillary was such a craptastic candidate that millions of people who voted for Obama didn't bother to show up.
Trump had fewer votes overall than Romney, and Romney was up against the most popular democrat since JFK.
The horse is dead. Flogging it won't help.
-jcr

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The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Re:Popcorn time! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-11-23 08:57 · Score: 2, Interesting

Coming from an institutional information security guy,
Halderman is the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society. U of M isn't even on the Centers of Academic Excellence list for Information Assurance Education for cyber defense, research, or operations.
Which is an academic way of saying when it comes to quality information security education or research institutions, the University of Michigan isn't even on the radar let alone a player in the game.
No surprise that a director of an unrecognized computer security organization does not produce quality research worth reading.
Re: Popcorn time! by 0100010001010011 · 2016-11-23 08:58 · Score: 3, Interesting

Once you have the methodology and code to do the statistical analysis it should be trivial to apply it to other elections.
What happens if it shows that Clinton was cheated out of the presidency and Sanders was cheated out of the candidate position?
Re:Popcorn time! by e3m4n · 2016-11-23 09:07 · Score: 5, Informative

not even close, you must be young. She is unpopular by damn near every veteran who served in the last 20 years. Her disdain for those who put their lives on the line in service to their country is well known. Even when she was first lady her disdain was apparent. Its amazing how times have changed and what used to be a small thing would shame someone into having to resign. 15 years ago Trent Lott was forced to resign because he told Strom Thurmond (someone older than dirt), at his 100th birthday party, gave a toast to try to make that old bastard feel good. Considering that it had been many decades since we had segregation, it didnt even occur to him that Strom ran on a segregation platform. So he was forced to resign. Consider how much dirt is on so many people thanks to silent whistle blowers and Wikileaks. Trent Lott never:
- got caught in Lie after Lie after Lie and later confirmed by Wikileaks
- complicit in the 1990s in denying constitutional rights to 150k veterans because they were drawing social security benefits so there they MIGHT be unstable
- promised to raise the taxes on the MIDDLE CLASS because 'its time they pay their fair share'
- Praised the 'Australian Solution' for gun control and promise the same thing here
- get caught in saying one thing publicly and then privately to the real masters (Goldman Sachs)
- Set up a private mail server. Lie and say its only for personal use. Delete what we now know turned out to be 650k email messages. Violate federal laws which regulate communication under the freedom of information act. Violate federal laws as to who can view classified information and how its secured and handled. Later in presidential debate insist that only those with clearance ever got sent those unencrypted, plain-text, highly classified, email messages only to get caught lying AGAIN when it was discovered she sent her worthless trust-fund daughter highly classified documents.
- Publicly call EVERY SINGLE ONE of your opponents supporters as the absolute DREGS of society (supporters you would want to sway to your side and win their vote btw)
- be so self centered and conceited that even the campaign slogan says it all "I'm with HER". Its ALWAYS about her not the suffering american worker.
- get caught Colluding with the mainstream media and STEALING the primary election.
- get caught organizing an ex-parte communication with an official presiding over her criminal investigation
- get caught cheating during debates because the campaign was being fed nearly ALL the questions in advance
- get outed by DNC favorite Michael Moore in 2007 as being the most corrupt politician by expressly stating that HRC took more donations by pharmaceuticals than every single other senator COMBINED.
so YES .. she IS that unpopular. Even people who are the CLOSEST to her cant stand her as a person. She has the personality of a rattle snake and twice the bite. She should have stopped when the FIRST screw-up hit the light of day. Its pure arrogance and selfishness to become the FIRST woman president that kept her from standing aside and letting a more qualified, or at LEAST significantly less tainted, person have a real shot.
Let me put it this way... she is so unpopular that DONALD TRUMP, an egotistical bastard with no background in politics, won an election against her. She and those around her represent the very essence of the disgusting Animal Farm behavior coming out of government over the last 20 years. The american people are sick of electing more pigs.
I would say there were more Never-Clintons and Never-Trump participants than those ACTUALLY in EITHER of their campaigns. My guess is that there were more Never-Clintons than Never-Trump's. Especially when the MSM ordered the staff to cut the feed any time Wikileaks got mentioned. That is yellow journalism and blatant coverup. People will not stand for some self appointed elitist class making such a thinly veiled attempt to manipulate, misguide, and mislead. It only enforces our oppositi
Re: Popcorn time! by Type44Q · 2016-11-23 09:12 · Score: 3, Insightful

...it would only expose vote tampering and fraud on the democrats' end
Why else would Hitlary not have begun immediately screaming out claims of vote-rigging??
Re:Popcorn time! by msauve · 2016-11-23 09:18 · Score: 4, Insightful

"So 1.3M or so fewer voters disliked Clinton. "

Fail. I'll posit that a very large number of voters didn't like either of them, they just closed their eyes and swallowed. You can't assume a vote means a like.

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"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Re:Popcorn time! by tsqr · 2016-11-23 09:20 · Score: 2

I'm waiting for the electoral college to flip to Clinton.
Technically possible, but politically impossible. The Electors from the states won by Trump are state and local Republican party functionaries, similar to national convention delegates. Some of them may not like Trump, but pretty much all of them harbor a deep and abiding hatred for Clinton. Aside from that, it would be political suicide for them to flip. By the way, the Electors, although "bound" to their party's candidate, are not constrained to casting their votes only for people whose names appeared on the ballots. This has happened several times in the Nation's history.

Of course, as pointed out in a recent article, Congress could always flip it back to Trump (or Pence if Trump keeps walking back his promises).
The only way Congress gets involved is if the Electoral College fails to award the minimum 270 votes to any candidate. Like the Electors, House members can vote for anyone they want to. You could end up with President Romney. Or McCain. Or Ryan. Or literally anyone else with an (R) by their name. I believe the appropriate phrase is, "Katie, bar the door."
Re:Popcorn time! by skids · 2016-11-23 09:34 · Score: 2

A sufficiently random, sufficiently large audit of a subsection of the vote should be sufficient to catch election fraud 90+% of the time, which would be an adequate deterrent (if the random audit fails, more audits up to and including a full recount as needed.) That would save significantly on the costs.
A lady named Kathy Dopp spends a good amount of time figuring out precisely how large an audit is needed to provide X% chance of catching a fraud, under a variety of circumstances. If you like statistics it's a fun problem.
We don't even do mandatory random audits in some states, though.

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Someone had to do it.
Re:Popcorn time! by Jhon · 2016-11-23 10:42 · Score: 2

" which is to break down some of the electronic voting machines and inspect the code for malware (he only suggests comparing the paper trail to the electronic count, not looking at the machines that don't have a paper trail.)"
Michigan has only paper ballots.
Pennsylvania's voting machines are so old they are pretty much unhackable.
Wisconsin's e-voting machines are located in rural counties -- where Trump does well.
(Business Insider -- the Summary links to it).
It's looking like a total waste of time to look in to this and will only make people annoyed at her and the dems in general.
Re:Popcorn time! by LowestKey · 2016-11-23 10:51 · Score: 2

You know, if you're going to call someone else a liar, you might be better served by not lying yourself. Just a tip. She did not call "EVERY SINGLE ONE of her opponents supporters as the absolute DREGS of society ". She said half, which is a verifiable fact. Sorry if you need a safe space to protect you from non-PC facts, but she was right. You're the one lying here.
Re:Popcorn time! by amicusNYCL · 2016-11-23 11:12 · Score: 4, Informative

The popular vote is meaningless. It would only be meaningful if it actually counted, but it doesn't. Voters know that we have an electoral college, and there are a lot of voters in states that are virtually guaranteed to go a certain way (California, New York, Texas, etc) who stay home because they know their vote isn't going to change anything. If the election was actually decided on a popular vote, THEN we could use that as some metric of determining popularity. We can't use it because people know that it's not a popular vote, and a lot of people stay home because of that.
We DO know that Trump and Clinton are the #1 and #2 most disliked candidates in the history of presidential polling, we do know that. We also know that Trump beat Clinton. We know that Clinton lost a national election to someone who is totally unqualified to be the president. We know that too. But it's kind of stupid to look at a difference in votes of less than 2% and use that to claim that Clinton is more "popular" than Trump. She very well could be.

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"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Re:Popcorn time! by Shatrat · 2016-11-23 11:45 · Score: 4, Funny

Given that Clinton raised twice the money that Trump did, the highest bidder theory is out the window.

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Re: Popcorn time! by quantaman · 2016-11-23 16:13 · Score: 2, Interesting

Please do look into it, I implore you. Not because I think it would change the outcome, but because I believe it would only expose vote tampering and fraud on the democrats' end.
Why would this time be any different than all the times GOP politicians announce they've found rock solid evidence of mass voter fraud, only to have all those rock solid cases evaporate when investigated?
"Mass voter fraud" is just a fairly tale the GOP tells the public so they can justify voter ID laws, which disproportionately target Democratic leaning minorities.
If the GOP actually cared about voter fraud they'd target mail-in ballots, since those actually are extremely susceptible to fraud. However, they'll never do that since mail-in ballots skew Republican.
For the record I don't expect this to find evidence of fraud, but I think the probability is high enough that they have to check.

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I stole this Sig
Re:Popcorn time! by God+of+Lemmings · 2016-11-23 16:30 · Score: 2

Why would a billionaire waste time asking for money he didn't need?

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Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
Re:Popcorn time! by adhdengineer · 2016-11-24 01:45 · Score: 2

why spend your own money when you can spend someone else's?
Re: Popcorn time! by xenoc_1 · 2016-11-24 06:48 · Score: 2

The House can't vote for whomever they want. The House can only choose between the top three electoral vote recipients. There's no way the House can select Romney unless Romney gets at least one electoral vote, from a faithless elector, and nobody other than Trump and Clinton get electoral votes more than Romney.
But the House doesn't even com into play unless Trump loses 37 of his 306 electors. His *Republican* electors.
All the salty snowflake tears in the world can't make that happen. At most, a few politically-suicidal Trump electors defect - none of them to Clinton. He still has well over the 270 votes needed. She still has far fewer than needed, maybe even less than her supposed 232 because of the promise-to-be-faithless Clinton electors like WA's Satiacum.
Bernie Sanders is more likely to be the 3rd recipient of electoral votes than is Romney, if there even is any 3rd-place electoral recipient at all.
Trump wins. He already won, in the election that matters, the separately summed 51 states & DC elections to choose presidential electors. Nothing is changing that. Go put your efforts to some meaningful if you're progressive, like standing with Standing Rock, placing for the 2018 midterms, state legislator elections because that's where gerrymandering happens. Forward-looking stuff. Not this "Wah somebody better fix this" backward undo-it crying.
I really wish people would RTFM aka Constitution before putting out nonsense.

How funny. by sls1j · 2016-11-23 03:23 · Score: 4, Funny

The DNC knows there was hacking because they've done it before and did it this election too. What a surprise.

Re:How funny. by Jhon · 2016-11-23 03:26 · Score: 4, Insightful

Wasn't there election day reports from Pennsylvania of straight Republican votes magically changing to Democratic votes? With cell phone video of it happening?
Re:How funny. by russotto · 2016-11-23 03:30 · Score: 5, Interesting

Yeah. They looked like pretty typical cases of a broken touch screen to me; the lack of any reports of Democratic votes changing to Republican might be reporting bias.
If you're going to rig a machine to change a vote, you'd be pretty dumb to make it show it changing.
Re:How funny. by Rei · 2016-11-23 03:42 · Score: 5, Informative

There were a number of reports in both directions (some places were reporting favoring Clinton, others Trump). In each case they were found to be poorly calibrated touchscreens - aka, the click position is off from where the user intends. In no case that's been reported did it lead to mis-cast votes, as you have to confirm your selection.
If you were looking to rig an election, showing the person that you've changed their vote and asking them to confirm it would rank near the top of the "Idiotic Approaches" list.

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Wingus, Dingus! Listen up!
Re:How funny. by seinman · 2016-11-23 03:45 · Score: 5, Interesting

I'm going to have to disagree with your assessment. I work in the audiovisual department of a large multinational corporation. In my specific building, we have about 50 Crestron AV control panels that use resistive touch screens. Calibration issues run rampant with these; in any given week, I am re-calibrating at least 5 of the panels. Every single time it is the same: you will touch a button, and the actual selected area will be to the left of your finger. Every. Single. Time. Sometimes we have panels shipped off for repairs if they need to be recalibrate more frequently than the others, and even after that, sometimes the calibration will slowly slip in the same direction. So it certainly is possible that with the touchscreen voting machines, all of the panels that have calibration issues are doing so in the same or a very similar manner.
Re:How funny. by mtmra70 · 2016-11-23 03:59 · Score: 4, Informative

It sounds like you need to upgrade your touch panels, or work with Crestron to get working units. I have been working with Crestron TPs for almost 15 years and I can count the number of times I have had to re-calibrate them on one hand.
Re:How funny. by roccomaglio · 2016-11-23 04:12 · Score: 5, Insightful

When Trump made the claim that the election was rigged Politifact ruled it "Pants on Fire", because "Given the decentralized nature of our elections, there would be no single way to throw the results," said Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine. http://www.politifact.com/trut...
Re:How funny. by Mashiki · 2016-11-23 04:18 · Score: 3

Wasn't there election day reports from Pennsylvania of straight Republican votes magically changing to Democratic votes? With cell phone video of it happening?
Texas. Video of it here. Another report here And also PA.

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Om, nomnomnom...
Re:How funny. by serviscope_minor · 2016-11-23 04:26 · Score: 5, Funny

I can count the number of times I have had to re-calibrate them on one hand.
That's because your hand failed to register them. You need to recalibrate your hand too.

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SJW n. One who posts facts.
Re:How funny. by I'm+New+Around+Here · 2016-11-23 04:37 · Score: 3, Informative

No you can't. By time you get to the third one, it's trying to count on the space between your fingers, and it never registers that instance. :^)
I support Crestron devices as well, and rarely have to calibrate the screens. I've seen others need more attention though. Love the ones that need you to press the "Calibrate Now" button, where it won't see that press correctly to do it.

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If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Re:How funny. by rjune · 2016-11-23 05:28 · Score: 2

If they hacked this election, they didn't do a very good job

So... by Mashiki · 2016-11-23 03:24 · Score: 3, Interesting

Is this part of the fake news? Or is it actually real news? Or is it Clinton being a sore loser. The DNC and Clinton doesn't really have a leg to stand on though, especially after fixing their own primary to make sure she was the candidate.

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Om, nomnomnom...

Re:So... by sycodon · 2016-11-23 03:27 · Score: 5, Insightful

It's the various academicians that still can't believe Trump won because, "nobody I know voted for Trump".

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When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Re:So... by Oswald+McWeany · 2016-11-23 03:33 · Score: 5, Insightful

Hard to call Clinton a sore loser since she hasn't supported any of these hacking theories or challenged the election in any way.
I don't like Hillary, but I've seen no sign of her being a sore loser. Some of her supporters have perhaps been.

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"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Re:So... by quantaman · 2016-11-23 03:36 · Score: 5, Informative

Is this part of the fake news? Or is it actually real news? Or is it Clinton being a sore loser. The DNC and Clinton doesn't really have a leg to stand on though, especially after fixing their own primary to make sure she was the candidate.
Clinton and the DNC aren't doing this, and reportedly her team was already told about this data and hasn't done anything about it because they didn't think it indicated fraud.

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I stole this Sig
Re:So... by Oswald+McWeany · 2016-11-23 03:40 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's the various academicians that still can't believe Trump won because, "nobody I know voted for Trump".
Put me in that corner. I accept the election result, but I'm baffled where all the Trump supporters came from. Most of my friends are die-hard Republicans, but I don't know a single person who (admitted) voting for Trump. I suspect that's because this election wasn't really fought along typical Republican vs Democrat, leftie vs rightie lines.
This election was more about the educated vs the blue collar workforce. Most people I know are college educated republicans and they claim they voted for Hillary and they hate Trump. I suspect out in the country, and in the less educated parts of town there were a lot of hourly wage democrats who voted for Donald.
I also think there are a lot of people who are in the "I would never vote for Trump" crowd, because they don't want to be associated with some of his more bizarre stances, who secretly voted for Trump when no one was looking.

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"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Re:So... by Rei · 2016-11-23 03:46 · Score: 3, Insightful

I'd actually like to see their data before I make up my mind. If it's just a correlation, that could just be a correlation between where voting machines tend to be located in a state and thus what demographics of voters will use them. 7% difference wouldn't be unreasonable in such a case. On the other hand, if they're controlling for that, it is concerning.

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Wingus, Dingus! Listen up!
Re:So... by sycodon · 2016-11-23 03:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

No know plenty of "blue collar" people who are "educated" and visa versa.
When you try to turn this into a "smart" vs "not smart" you are asking for trouble. It's more likely about people who have been negatively impacted by the last few decades of policy.
For instance, I'm thinking that there is a good chance that plenty of IT workers who have had to train their foreign replacement voted for Trump.

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When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Re:So... by Hulfs · 2016-11-23 04:00 · Score: 3, Funny

Well, not giving a defeat speech is a little out of "best standard".
Oh really..I suppose the liberal media just staged this whole event then?
http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/09/...
Re:So... by Tailhook · 2016-11-23 04:04 · Score: 4, Insightful

who secretly voted for Trump when no one was looking
We're living in the midst of another McCarthy-ist era; people can lose a lot if they're found to support the "wrong" side or have a non-SJW compliant opinion. The left should really look into working around the secret ballot in public elections as they've been trying to do in union elections; that would secure their power forever.

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Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Re:So... by Mashiki · 2016-11-23 04:08 · Score: 4, Insightful

Most of my friends are die-hard Republicans, but I don't know a single person who (admitted) voting for Trump. I suspect that's because this election wasn't really fought along typical Republican vs Democrat, leftie vs rightie lines.
And that's exactly what it is. You'll find people from both sides of the isle voted for Trump because of what Hillary stood for. The reality is there was more support for Trump because he wasn't establishment, she was. They feel that the current state of government doesn't represent the people. That's why he had the support. The media is at a loss, and still hasn't learned anything from it though.
A lot of people like myself, who are or were heavily invested in politics saw this coming. This has been building for ~20 odd years, and it's very close to reaching the full-on shoot politicians in the streets. The Tea Party stuff was a warning sign, just like AfD, FN, and so on are warning signs. The media refused to listen, the politicians refused to listen. In the end Trump is far less extreme then the next candidate would have been. Just like Le Pen is, just like Frauke Petry is.

I also think there are a lot of people who are in the "I would never vote for Trump" crowd, because they don't want to be associated with some of his more bizarre stances, who secretly voted for Trump when no one was looking.
It's more likely they don't want to be targeted or attacked. You can seem multiple cases of that all over the US. Unlike the people who claimed "Trump supporters" attacked them. Those people who made the claims are being charged with filing false police reports. Off the top of my head, I can think of fake rape, fake assaults, fake vandalism, fake flyers, fake deportation letters, fake claims of harassment and mugging.

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Om, nomnomnom...
Re:So... by fahrbot-bot · 2016-11-23 04:16 · Score: 2

I'm baffled where all the Trump supporters came from.
Trump said over and over that the election was rigged - he just never said which way... It broke his way and he's not complaining, so there you go.

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It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Re:So... by mobby_6kl · 2016-11-23 04:19 · Score: 2

You're the one making this a "smart" vs "not smart" issue, the OP said "blue collar" and [college] educated which is basically a class thing. The latter are doing pretty great, despite the constant bitching about the evil Indians taking dem jerbs.
Re:So... by kuzb · 2016-11-23 04:22 · Score: 3, Insightful

Have a good look at how Clinton supporters acted during the election. They would come out and physically attack Trump supporters. Is it any surprise that many just didn't bother to scream their affiliations from a rooftop? You probably know plenty of people who voted Trump and they just didn't bother to tell you because they didn't want to deal with the reaction and chastisement.

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BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Re:So... by whoever57 · 2016-11-23 04:22 · Score: 2

Most of my friends are die-hard Republicans, but I don't know a single person who (admitted) voting for Trump. I suspect that's because this election wasn't really fought along typical Republican vs Democrat, leftie vs rightie lines.
They voted for Trump. They just don't want to admit it.

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The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Re:So... by AthanasiusKircher · 2016-11-23 04:24 · Score: 5, Insightful

Well, not giving a defeat speech is a little out of "best standard".
Oh really..I suppose the liberal media just staged this whole event then?
Indeed. And although I was never (and still am not) a fan of Clinton (nor Trump), I'm willing to cut her a break on this one. Whether or not you supported Trump and even if you believed media coverage and polls were biased against him, everything the Hillary campaign was going on indicated that she had a 95% or even 99% chance of winning. I'm sure they didn't adequately even prepare a draft of a concession speech until around 10pm the night of the election. Heck, we've heard reports from other countries that they didn't even prepare for the possibility of a Trump victory and only got around to trying to establish contacts with his campaign a week after the election! And Clinton and her family had been in the political limelight for the past 25 years or so -- and suddenly, she's looking at going home.
So, she called Trump and conceded. But rather than addressing a group of supporters in shock in the middle of the night with a half-assed speech, she waited for her speechwriters to sober up and write what was actually a reasonably good speech that actually called for an "open mind" to what Trump would do and a "peaceful transfer of power."
I may not like her, but I give her kudos for that speech. It may be more typical to give a concession speech in the middle of the night, but personally I'm glad she waited until the morning when it could be heard -- because it had important conciliatory messages... some of which haven't subsequently been heeded by her supporters.
Re:So... by serviscope_minor · 2016-11-23 04:32 · Score: 5, Informative

Well, not giving a defeat speech is a little out of "best standard"
I just don't get the disconnect from reality involved with people like you. It's kind of like you believe that if you make shit up loudly enough and often enough then it will become true.
You can certainly make people *believe* it's true. However when the rubber meets the road, reality will not yield. I guess when everything fails to work as promised, it won't be you at fault for ignoring reality, no it will be someone else's fault. Some trumpanzees are already beginning to convince themselves pre-emptively that when things go wrong it'll be the Democrat's fault.
Now go and watch Clinton's concession speech and admit that it does in fact exist.

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SJW n. One who posts facts.
Re:So... by kuzb · 2016-11-23 04:34 · Score: 2

Did they? The DNC was caught red handed doing things that are blatantly illegal in order to try to manipulate the election.

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BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Re:So... by anarcobra · 2016-11-23 04:36 · Score: 2

The media still refuses to listen.
Depending how this Trump presidency goes it will be even worse next time.
Re:So... by HornWumpus · 2016-11-23 04:39 · Score: 2

Democrats can run their primaries in any why they choose.
But they take federal money for the primaries...funny how federal money comes with strings for every college in the nation, but for political parties it's fine to take the money and still appoint as many delegates as they want.

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John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Re:So... by iMadeGhostzilla · 2016-11-23 04:43 · Score: 2

Michael Moore knew Trump would win. My guess is it's because he actually walks among regular people.
Re:So... by damn_registrars · 2016-11-23 04:49 · Score: 3, Insightful

This election was more about the educated vs the blue collar workforce.
I rather doubt it. Trump offered nothing valuable to the blue collar workforce.

Much more likely is that this was a battle between "Not Trump" and "Not Clinton", it came down to who could get more people to the polls to stop the other party's candidate. At the end of the day, the GOP hatred for Clinton won out over the democrat's concern over Trump.

Just look at this year's numbers. Between 2012 and 2016, our country's population increased by over 10 million, yet 6 million fewer votes were cast. The bulk of those votes that were cast in 2012 but not in 2016 were people who voted Obama in 2012 and stayed home in 2016. There are very few states where Trump (in 2016) received more votes than Romney (in 2012), but there were many where Clinton (in 2016) received notably fewer than Obama (in 2012).

Hence the real question is whether the democratic voters sat out because they didn't care (or didn't like Hillary) or sat out because they believed all the polling before election day that said she was going to win easily.

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Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Re:So... by Goldsmith · 2016-11-23 05:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

I think the "fake news" part of this is really under appreciated.
This is exactly the kind of thing that erodes people's faith in the ability of the news media to report facts, and to report facts without bias.
It's a pretty big deal to suggest you have evidence the presidential election was stolen. This is not a feel-good fluff piece, it deserves a little editorial attention. A review of the evidence by an expert in election statistics shows that it's really just normal voting patterns. Some people are going to read the article on CNN, read the actual statisticians response elsewhere, and know CNN was putting out click bait, not a real news story. If you're upset that other people putting out fake click bait articles skewed the election, then what CNN is doing here should really piss you off.
There is no way a responsible journalist publishes this story, or a responsible news organization carries it. It is BS like this that supports the idea that there are different standards for "truth" in the media depending on the politics attached to article.
I think a different standard applies to Halderman. He's a computer security researcher who is using the election as an example of a vulnerable system. It's great for him to put out his Medium piece, he's not pretending to be anything other than a guy really interested in the mechanisms for verifying information systems, and he right up front is clear that he's not making any claim that the election was actually stolen.
Re:So... by 0100010001010011 · 2016-11-23 05:07 · Score: 5, Interesting

but I'm baffled where all the Trump supporters came from.
There are a few different groups. Lets get the KKK, Nationalists, etc out of the way. Yes they voted for him (Like they would have voted for Clinton) but their numbers are so small they're really not worth discussing on a national scale.
In the Midwest:
In large part it's blue collar salt of the earth people in the middle. Come out and visit 'us'. (I didn't vote trump but my state and county did). If you make a joke about flyover country you'll probably get punched the 10th time you say it. Most of the people out here are the nicest people you'll meet. If you ever needed anything (Flat tire, etc) they'll be the first to stop and lend a hand. Everyone has had a job that was affected by NAFTA. (Real or perceived, most people think they were affected by NAFTA)
50% of household earning less than $35k don't have Internet. Some townships are on Dialup alone. [Despite having our tax money go to help fix that]. Our infastructure is literally falling apart around us. We don't have enough population in any single county to warrant people paying attention to us. When it comes to 'social' issues most of us are "I don't see it I don't care". When asked where a transgendered person pees it's probably in the woods like everyone else. But we really, really hate being dictated to about 'how it is' from the coasts.
Some of us tried the high road, my county went very Bernie in the primaries. Polls had both WI and MI completely wrong. We saw Bernie as the democratic way to 'make america great again' and were told, literally, "You aren't needed in November" despite filling stadiums and waiting in lines to see Sanders.
Republican votes per county have held flat 2008-2012-2016. Jill stein saw a 'huge' jump between 2012-2016. And Democratic voters more or less just stayed home.
The second group is a bit more entertaining to watch:
It's /r/The_Donald. It's the angry, contrarian young male vote. It seems to be a melting pot of RedPill, 4Chan, and a bunch of other places that demographic hangs out, online equivalent of a bag of cats.
Milo Yiannopoulos seemed to gain a lot of traction and followers out of the GamerGate. They have less in common other than they really really hate the "SJW" type and saw trump as the anti PC candidate. I'm fascinated by people watching so I've dug through some profiles. Most are just 18-25 year old males that feel something about Obama or Clinton gave them the short end of the stick.
The recruiting techniques are pretty much follow gang recruiting techniques that have been used for centuries and are used now to radicalize people for ISIS. "Did those people wrong you? It's this persons fault. Join us and we'll "fix" it".
Beyond that there's really nothing that binds them. (Other than some don't know how to create new Reddit Profiles).
For example one user is a ~20 year old 2nd generation Muslim Indian immigrant. Follows soccer and Cricket, loves cats, smokes cannabis lives in NY, drives around a BMW 435i and used to drive an Audi S5. And is all on the trump train ... because.
Re:So... by HungWeiLo · 2016-11-23 06:05 · Score: 5, Interesting

Not all Trump voters are racists.
But every single racist person I know voted for Trump.

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There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Re:So... by Ungrounded+Lightning · 2016-11-23 06:05 · Score: 5, Informative

It's the various academicians that still can't believe Trump won because, "nobody I know voted for Trump".
This is a case of:
- A security researcher using the close election and hand-wringing over possible cheating to try to institutionalize actually CHECKING the paper audit trails against the tabulated results, before discarding the paper.
- And calling for candidates who lost close elections (on either side) to ask for a recount - because that's the only way to get it to happen in THIS election before the paper ballots ARE discarded, after the deadline which is JUST DAYS AWAY.
- Then the mainstream media (in "nobody I know voted for Trump" mode because they don't TALK to anybody outside their echo chamber) trying to spin that into "academics say Hillary lost due to vote-rigging".)
Read TFA: He explicitly says he thinks it's unlikely Hillary lost due to rigging, that the unexpected trump win was due to massively defective polls.
Disclaimer: I've met Halderman. He's a top-notch computer security researcher (and teacher of such in academia) and a cool head.

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Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Re:So... by SecurityGuy · 2016-11-23 06:09 · Score: 4, Informative

My understanding of the US system is that the Electoral College votes for the president, and they actually ignored the popular vote and selected Trump in this case.
No, that is completely false. Electoral votes are decided state-by-state. The electors haven't even cast their ballots yet, so the totals you're seeing are how many Trump and Clinton will get if the electors all vote the way the popular vote tells them to. The detail you're missing is that it's the popular vote in each state that matters, not the national popular vote.
For a simplified example of how this works, imagine 3 states with 10 people in them. Each state gets 1 electoral vote.
State A: All 10 people vote for Clinton. She gets one electoral vote.
State B: 6 people vote for Trump, 4 for Clinton. He gets one electoral vote.
State C: 6 people vote for Trump, 4 for Clinton. He gets one electoral vote.
Trump wins the election 2 electoral votes to 1, even though 18 people voted for Clinton and only 12 for Trump.
Re:So... by HornWumpus · 2016-11-23 06:12 · Score: 2

The FEC matches the first $250 of any contributions during the primary campaign AND completely pays for the nominating conventions.
Cite: http://www.fec.gov/ans/answers...
Just the convention funding is enough to bring many strings for any other group besides political parties.

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John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Re:So... by Howitzer86 · 2016-11-23 06:31 · Score: 2

I know quite a few racist Democrat Hillary voters.
Re:So... by drinkypoo · 2016-11-23 07:40 · Score: 2

This election was more about the educated vs the blue collar workforce.
I rather doubt it. Trump offered nothing valuable to the blue collar workforce.
Even Slashdot is chock-full of people who believe that Trump, who owns a visa mill and is married to an immigrant and has products made with sweatshop labor, is going to bring jobs back to America and stick it to the fat cats who run Washington. He's not even president yet and he's already breaking promises, but that hasn't stopped his most athletic supporters.

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"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:So... by T.E.D. · 2016-11-23 07:56 · Score: 5, Informative

You wouldn't know it from the SJWs, but you can walk a gay lesbian wearing a hijab through the whitest white town and the worst they might experience is a short chat with local law enforcement
Last I heard, Louisiana was part of the USA. As was New York City, and Charlotte, NC
To bring this thread full-circle, just because you have the privilege of being a Cis White guy so you don't ever have to experience that stuff, doesn't mean it isn't happening to people.
Re:So... by dywolf · 2016-11-23 09:13 · Score: 2

It's insanity is what it is.
just today I had a guy ranting in my feed that any day now she'll be arrested over the Clinton foundation's corruption...even though there's basically 0 evidence of that (and its consistently one of the most highly rated charities in the world....to which the reply is "that just shows they bought off the watchdogs").
and this while:
-there is actual evidence of actual corruption and illegal payments by the trump foundation to himself
-of his campaign circumventing finance laws that block simply pocketing the contributions by holding his rallies almost exclusively at properties he owns
-and trump himself is already, not even president yet just president-elect, blatantly engaging in behavior we'd call corrupt in anyone else, especially a Clinton or Obama.
but these idiots don't even see that, they just say, contrary to all fact "any day now....the evidence is mounting, and we'll get to lock her up".
it is insanity.

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The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Re:So... by painandgreed · 2016-11-23 09:41 · Score: 2

In many respects, that makes sense, Trump's "Make America Great Again" rhetoric would resonate most with people who have not had a great 8 years under Obama, and least with those who have.
Yep, the entire time I wanted to know exactly what metrics Trump was speaking about that isn't higher than pretty much any other time in the US history. It pretty much all came down to jobs for people from vanishing industries and rural areas, essentially, they seem to want a government work program. They won't see it that because they "want jobs not handouts" but such jobs apparently aren't currently economically viable. They can try and get them back with some protectionism, rearrangement of some government money, but in the end they'll be talking about more expensive labor (even more so with the immigration policies discussed). I'm not against such things as jobs for all, but would think that if anybody thinks it's an problem with an easy solution, they're an idiot. Still, I find it funny that the supposedly conservative population seem to want an economy that sounds more like some parts of Europe like Switzerland. (Not that I really know that much about European economics; it's just an impression I have.) Next they will be crying out for single payer health care, maternity leave, and free child care.
Re:So... by dunkindave · 2016-11-23 15:34 · Score: 2

No one said the elections are based on 'after the election was called by all the major news outlets'. Nice strawman though
You did. You said, and I quote: "over nine hours after the election was called by all the major news outlets." Who cares when the election was called by all the major news outlets?
Actually, I didn't say it and your quotes show it. You seem to be conflating "based" i.e. legally based upon, with "called" i.e. projected/determined/announced, which is why your retort is a strawman. The elections are legally based on the outcome of the electoral college vote on December 19th, where the electors are decided by the separate states based on the results of the state elections on November 8th. This is why a candidate can receive more overall votes yet still lose the election. What the news outlets do is CALL the election, sort of like an announcer does during a ball game, following all the moves and explaining the significance. In general the announcer is educated regarding how the game is played and their analysis is to be taken seriously since they have a need to be as accurate as possible to avoid losing their job or their listeners. The networks are the same - they need to provide trustworthy results so people will tune in again next election. They don't decide the election, they provide the data and analysis of what is happening, including when it appears one side has beaten the other. It is their track record since Dewey, a lesson they learned well, that make people have confidence in what they are saying. That is why when most or all of them are projecting which candidate has won, the candidates accept it since they know is a virtual certainty. It is still the electoral colleges job to make the official decision though.

So in your country there is no speculation or projection about who won until every single vote is counted? No one looks at the data available to see who is, within a truly negligibly small probability of error, the winner, and then that person begins the planning for assuming power? Sounds very inefficient and rather authoritarian actually.
Well, it doesn't take that long to count votes, if you do it properly.
Maybe we don't do it properly. There are ballots still being counted in places, and it has been over two weeks since they were cast. For example, some organisations have still not called Michigan.

We generally have projections that night, sure, but who the hell cares? Lets say Fox is projecting the R will win, and CNN is projecting the D. Should both concede? What about MSNBC? Who the hell cares?
Normally, the candidates care, as do their closer supporters since they have to hit the ground running, and the longer it takes to know who won means less time to get everything setup. That was a major problem for Bush in 2000. For example, when the president changes, every single Executive White House staff position (including Executive Office Building) needs to be restaffed by the new president's team, and that is a lot of people. They only have a couple months to figure it out, while also figuring out whom to nominate for all the cabinet and other presidential appointment positions.
Regarding different networks calling a different winner, name me an example in the last 50 years of that happening. It hasn't. And even if they all somehow did got it wrong, the incorrect projections would be discovered soon after and the real winner announced (followed by a lot of press shaming), and the true winner would be voted in by the college. The incorrectly called candidate would have spent wasted time while the actual winner would be facing a shortened time to organize. But then under your system of waiting until absolute certain, the winner would have had to wait anyway, so our system is at worse like yours.

I find it interesting that you think 'actually count

Genuine question by Anonymous Coward · 2016-11-23 03:25 · Score: 3, Interesting

I am not an American, but I was wondering if Clinton Campaign can -- at least hypothetically -- really challenge the results? I mean, is it a thing?

Re:Genuine question by sycodon · 2016-11-23 03:35 · Score: 2

I don't think there is any real way they can challenge the results.
If, as they are suggesting, the Trump win came from hacked voting machines, there is no paper trail to check against. Once you click the submit button, the vote is logged. They have no idea who cast it, or what (if it was different) their intention was. It also means that you have no concrete means to be sure that how you voted is what was counted. The reputation of the system is the only thing you can rely on.
Same thing with paper ballots. No signatures, no trail. About the only thing you can do there is carefully recount them, which is happening more and more often.
On the one hand, it makes it so no one can be intimidated into voting a certain way ("if you want to keep your job, prove you voted how I want")
On the other, it makes find any fraud almost impossible to detect. About the only thing you can go on is the Registrations. It's not uncommon that far more people voted than are registered. Investigations are seldom done in this circumstances.

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When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Re: Genuine question by meta-monkey · 2016-11-23 03:42 · Score: 3, Informative

Technically the electors aren't even required to vote according to the popular vote of their state in most states. No one has ever done it successfully though.
To expound, the electors are chosen by slate. It's not like they're just random people from the state who go vote. If the Republican wins and your state has 10 EV, then 10 prominent Republicans, like people who worked hard on the state campaign, etc, are sent to the Electoral College to proudly cast their vote for the Republican they helped get elected. And if the Democrats had won the state, the 10 electors would be prominent Democrats. It's one of those "big honor ceremonial" things. So the whole "faithless elector" thing is retarded, and your friends sharing that petition around on FaceBook probably never took Civics class. They're expecting that dozens of die hard partisans are going to switch their votes. This does not happen.

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We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Re:Genuine question by green1 · 2016-11-23 03:51 · Score: 2

With paper ballots this is easy, you have observers from each party at the polling station. Each voter takes their ballot, marks it, and then places it in a ballot box. The observers make sure the ballot boxes aren't tampered with until they are unsealed after the polls close, and are counted in front of the observers. Once the votes are counted they are placed back in the boxes under the supervision of the observers, and the boxes are sealed and stored for possible later re-counts.
This leaves each elector knowing that what they wrote on the paper got in to the ballot box unaltered, and each party's observer stops anyone from tampering with the ballot boxes before they are counted, and ensures the counting is fair. Nobody knows who voted for who, but they do know that the votes that were cast are the same ones being counted.
This is how civilized countries run elections.
Then of course there are the corrupt places that eliminate critical parts of this system in the hopes of rigging elections. For example places that get rid of paper ballots, or observers, or where the person marking the ballot doesn't place it in the box themselves, or places where someone other than the person marking the ballot gets to see what's on the ballot. But only a truly corrupt regime would implement any of those policies.
Re:Genuine question by Jason+Levine · 2016-11-23 04:34 · Score: 2

There are also hybrid digital-paper methods that would allow for the rapid counting of digital with the auditing that paper provides. Where I vote, we fill in circles on a Scantron form. The form is scanned, the votes added in, and the form itself goes into a locked box. The votes are tallied digitally but if a recount is needed, the original paper forms can be retrieved. I'm not saying that Scantrons are the best system, but they are better than a purely digital touchscreen system.

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My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Re: Genuine question by fredgiblet · 2016-11-23 18:46 · Score: 2

There's a list on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

You can't by smooth+wombat · 2016-11-23 03:26 · Score: 5, Insightful

Because Diebold et al have steadfastly refused to provide a verifiable paper trail, claiming it's too complicated, or incorporate any kind of audit log, we will never know if the votes which people cast were correctly recorded.

This applies to anyone during any election these machines have been in place, not only this one.

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We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Re:You can't by Anonymous Coward · 2016-11-23 03:37 · Score: 5, Insightful

The ironic thing is when people ask for paper voting machines, they get told they are fossils. Yes, paper has issues (hanging chads, etc.), but it requires physical access to tamper with. E-voting, once the bits are flipped, there is no way, ever, to know what the total once was.
Best of all worlds is an E-voting machine that prints out a human readable summary of a ballot, then the ballot is physically dropped into a box. Worked for ages with mechanical voting systems.
Re:You can't by meta-monkey · 2016-11-23 03:46 · Score: 2

Because some of the local election officials want to cheat.
I rather like my county's system. You fill out a paper ballot, and then you feed the ballot into the scantron machine for counting, and the ballot is locked in the machine. If you suspect the machines are rigged, the officials, watched by representatives of the candidates can crack open the machine and hand count the ballots. That is fair and reasonable. But this touchscreen only stuff can kiss my ass.

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We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Re:You can't by green1 · 2016-11-23 04:00 · Score: 5, Insightful

US elections baffle me. You use optical scanners? We use humans.
Our ballots are recorded with paper and pencil, and counted manually. Voting takes the average person no more than 10 minutes from the time they arrive at the polling station, until they have finished casting their ballot (yes, we actually have enough polling stations that we don't have long lines), and we have election results within an hour or two of the polls closing (short of any re-counts), and the process is transparent, and easily audited.
Why does the US continue to try to make voting as difficult and complex as possible? Is it really the end goal of the US government to prevent people from voting?
Re:You can't by smooth+wombat · 2016-11-23 04:20 · Score: 2, Interesting

Is it really the end goal of the US government to prevent people from voting?

Yes. It is fairly well established the more people vote the more likely it is an incumbent will not be re-elected. In fact, one of the founders of the Heritage Foundation has stated he doesn't want everyone to vote.

If you have followed U.S. politics in the last decade you will have noticed a concerted effort by Republicans to make it more difficult for people to vote. The excuse is there's rampant voter fraud going on yet with the exception of a few isolated cases, they have never shown this "rampant" fraud.

Which brings us full circle to the issue at hand. In my area the Republican-led districts have gone ahead with these electronic voting machines which have no way to verify votes are being correctly recorded. When asked about this issue their response has been, more or less, "Computers don't make mistakes".

Which is funny because if they're claiming voter fraud how do they know it's going on if one can't verify the vote being cast?

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We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Re:You can't by whoever57 · 2016-11-23 04:33 · Score: 3, Informative

Why does the US continue to try to make voting as difficult and complex as possible?

I don't think you understand the magnitude of the problem.
My ballots for this last election were on 3 large pieces of card (larger than letter/A4). Two of these were double-sided, so a total of 5 sides of things to vote on.
There was a total of about 25 different items that I voted on.
Obviously, President, but also Federal Senator and Representative, state-level offices, local offices (mayor, city council, school board, etc.), the boards of various organizations such as BART and my local hospital.
Then, there were about 10 propositions, including one to legalize marijuana.

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Re:You can't by wvmarle · 2016-11-23 05:40 · Score: 2

The sad part is that the election organisers accept this.
How hard can it be to add a printer to the voting machine, which basically spits out a marked ballot paper, which the voter places in a ballot box? Best of both worlds. Electronic voting - have the machine count the votes for you, instant results when the station closes. Paper voting - when the station is closed simply count the total number of ballot papers, verify it matches the number of votes the machine has. Should be the same number. The paper ballots allow for a recount, if necessary, e.g. if the totals don't match or if there's a suspected problem with the machine (maybe do a handful of recounts in randomly selected stations to verify the machine's results).
Re:You can't by green1 · 2016-11-23 05:57 · Score: 4, Insightful

Do you think that other countries don't vote for things other than their leader?
We have multiple ballots for multiple issues. (no one ballot ever has more than one item on it)
Now we do spread things out a bit, with municipal, provincial, and federal votes happening at different times, but we still manage to vote for all these things without the complexity.

Yes. Yes, indeed. by dlb101010 · 2016-11-23 03:27 · Score: 2

The American political cluster-fuck continues. There's no end in sight. And away we continue, one and all.

Doesn't matter by Interfacer · 2016-11-23 03:28 · Score: 3, Interesting

This is like calling on the electors to not choose Trump, or come up with all sorts of far fetched plans that would somehow put Clinton on the big seat. Look at the county results map. Even if the DNC can somehow find a technicality to avoid a Trump presidency, the result will be more or less a civil war imo. There is no way that the actual people in those red counties are going to let 'the big city folks' put Trump aside.

I am not a big fan of him either. Nor of Hillary for that matter. But at this point it's gone so far that either he becomes president or you'll have riots from coast to coast.

Re:Doesn't matter by clonehappy · 2016-11-23 03:31 · Score: 2

either he becomes president or you'll have riots from coast to coast.
Don't discount that the controllers aren't hoping for exactly the latter outcome.
Re:Doesn't matter by bfpierce · 2016-11-23 03:38 · Score: 4, Informative

I've seen this said before where it's 'WOW look at all those red counties' which discredits the fact that a whole ton of those counties are just 'slightly' red.
The popular vote was split, it's going to look that way in a whole lotta places. Thinking the election was a 'wash of republicanism' is misunderstanding what those result maps actually mean.
Re:Doesn't matter by green1 · 2016-11-23 04:13 · Score: 3, Interesting

But at this point it's gone so far that either he becomes president or you'll have riots from coast to coast.
Riots are possible the other direction too you know.
In fact, I think the political system in the USA has become so divisive, and so hostile at this point, that civil war is almost inevitable. Probably not in this election cycle, but I don't know how much more of this sort of politics the nation can withstand. Each side of every election tries harder and harder to tell everyone that if you don't vote for their candidate that you are a horrible and unpatriotic American who wants to destroy the country. People are starting to believe it. And when some parts of the population actively despise other parts of the population with the amount of vitriol that the 2 parties want, how long before it boils over?

Computer scientists don't understand sociology by Sarten-X · 2016-11-23 03:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

Having read earlier reports of this analysis, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree.

From what I read, there was no attempt to find other explanations, like a demographic preference for e-voting over paper, or the local economic costs of maintaining one particular voting mechanism.

Nope, let's just just straight to assuming hacking.

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You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.

Re:Computer scientists don't understand sociology by Fire_Wraith · 2016-11-23 03:41 · Score: 4, Informative

Not by the initial group, no, but others such as Nate Silver and Nate Cohn who looked at the data said that the differences could be accounted for by factoring in demographic differences.could likely account for it.

That said, at some point we're going to need to take measures to make sure that hacking/cheating/rigging doesn't occur, even if only to head off these kinds of accusations. We should not simply blindly trust that an unaudited computer system does what we're told it should. This is something we should put in place for future elections, at the very least, because even if no one actually does try to cheat, it's far too easy to undermine the legitimacy of an election if there's no way to confirm the results are fair. Random audits, such as suggested by Ron Rivest and Phil Stark, would be a good step towards that end:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
Re:Computer scientists don't understand sociology by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2016-11-23 04:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

Perhaps the single largest reason for the massive miscalculation of predictions was the vast social pressure against admitting you wanted to vote for Trump. This is why we have secret ballots, to forestall such pressures and threats of retaliation.

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Re:Computer scientists don't understand sociology by wired_parrot · 2016-11-23 04:26 · Score: 4, Insightful

While true that the differences may be demographic in nature, these claims point to a bigger problem with e-voting machines: there is no paper trail to allow the results to be audited and scrutinized. The integrity of the results cannot be verified. With a paper ballot, a careful manual recount would've been possible, with multiple observers to confirm the count. This is simply not possible with electronic ballots
Having a cloud of suspicion over the results benefits no one, most of all Trump himself. Any election system that does not have an auditable paper trail will become a breeding ground for conspiracy theories and a focus for electoral challenges. This is bad not just for the losing candidate, but for democracy in general, as it risks deligitimizing the results.
Re:Computer scientists don't understand sociology by quietwalker · 2016-11-23 04:33 · Score: 2

To be fair, this is the standard, accepted mechanism for dealing with any emotionally charged issue today. What people FEEL about it is considered more valid than the facts of the matter, to the point that asking for, much less providing and citing facts is considered politically incorrect on one side and unpatriotic/traitorous on the other.
For example;
- any reason other than sexism for male/female hiring rates, pay differences, or if there is a wage gap
- any reason other than racism for black crime rates, including victim and convicted rates
- gun ownership demographics compared to violent crime involving guns
- the 'war on drugs' and discussions of what its achieved
- anything about abortion
etc.
The problem is that the loudest voices are often the craziest or zaniest, and that gets the most headlines in an era where invoking moral outrage and shouting down an argument is considered a critical public debate technique. Calm analysis is considered a trademark of 'the elite', where 'the elite' is anyone who is an authority on a subject but doesn't agree with the listener, and therefore can be ignored as the mouthpiece some collective, coordinated socio-facist attempt to force people to think in a specific way.

Re:Why won't Democrats support the outcome? by bfpierce · 2016-11-23 03:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

So what you're saying is if there's a hint of voting fraud we should as a nation just say 'fuck it' and not take a look?

Cause that's pants on head stupid.

Re:Already DeBunked by BarbaraHudson · 2016-11-23 03:31 · Score: 2, Insightful

Yep. When corrected for race, income, and other variables, the exit polls lined up with the actual vote counts. Butt-hurt Clinton crybabies, get over it. And stop with the whole "majority of the votes" shit. Neither trump nor Clinton wan a majority of the votes. Fucking morons.

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Re:Why won't Democrats support the outcome? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-11-23 03:37 · Score: 2, Informative

It is not the democrats who are bringing this up. This is being brought up by a computer science professor who believes that he has evidence that the election was rigged. As of now, no officials of the DNC have even commented on this and are not currently pushing for an audit.

If independent experts also review this evidence and agree that something is fishy, then we SHOULD perform an audit of the results. If it turns out that there is nothing there, then so be it, but if there is evidence that suggests something fraudulent is happening, then our democracy at least deserves taking the time to investigate.

As an engineer, I want to know... by frank_adrian314159 · 2016-11-23 03:39 · Score: 2

Were the stats adjusted for racial and income makeup of the counties examined? Clinton underperformed among poor white voters. The reason for this "discrepency" is probably a correlation between poor counties and use of electronic voting machines. The D's (who I normally vote with) need no excuse for losing other than the shitty campaign their candidate ran. #itshillarysfault.

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That is all.

Please get rid of e-voting machines now by StandardCell · 2016-11-23 03:40 · Score: 4, Insightful

Even if we had a fully open and verifiable hardware and software architecture, it doesn't prevent someone from finding weaknesses. The only solution to this potential subversion of the people's will is to get rid of e-voting entirely and go back to paper ballots.

Re:Why won't Democrats support the outcome? by brickhouse98 · 2016-11-23 03:42 · Score: 2

The crux of this is that scientists brought it forward. I would assume they'd sooner have Clinton but who knows. With the fact that it's so close, I wouldn't have an issue with checking them. I'd say the same if Trump was on the other end and was that close. I highly doubt it'll change the election but if there is evidence, why not audit it like any other election would?

Re:Sore losers by Sarten-X · 2016-11-23 03:42 · Score: 2

Sort of...

It's also very disappointing that the polls and predictions were so wildly incorrect. That is highly irregular, though not indicative of foul play.

I'm not ambitious enough to find the article, but Nate Silver had an informative retrospective piece about how some of the most influential voting blocks ended up voting contrary to what they were assumed to do, while polls concentrated on getting accurate results in other areas more typically "on the fence".

Trump's campaign did a surprisingly good job of swaying typically-blue voters to his side, while Clinton's campaign focused on the traditional swing states. Ultimately, those states that Clinton won couldn't compensate for the masses that Trump won, so Trump won the election. Since the polls focused on those swing states as well, Clinton showed a lead there.

In the future, we'll need to have an analysis of the polls that considers their assumptions about who's important to poll. The reality is that every vote counts, even when you might not expect it to.

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You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.

Re:Why won't Democrats support the outcome? by The-Ixian · 2016-11-23 03:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

You can point out a flaw in the system without agreeing with the flaw in the system...

I really don't understand this us/them mentality that people keep spewing. We all work together, we are family members, coworkers and fellow human beings with the same exact needs.

I work in a heavily republican environment. But they are all good people and I respect my co-workers. I don't believe in some of their choices, but who cares? Why should someone's choice for president make them the enemy? It's just stupid.

The only reason I can come up with is that it is in the best interest for those in power to keep the voting base divided. So all these "problems" are weaponized and sold to us as the bogey man coming to take our children.

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Re:Already DeBunked by Rei · 2016-11-23 03:45 · Score: 3, Informative

Reference please. This says just the opposite.

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Honest answer by HBI · 2016-11-23 03:46 · Score: 2

Yes. She can - or more properly her campaign can, on behalf of the slates of Democratic electors in the affected states. They would normally have to file for recounts and then challenge ballots one by one. In this kind of case...it would be a pretty new thing for the courts.

The truth of the matter is that in most cases the election results have already been certified, which pushes things to another level. You'd have to get some judge in each state to agree to let this happen, and then after that you'd have to expect to get appeal after appeal. Moreover, it'd have to happen in three separate states to change the election result. The margins in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are much larger than in Michigan, so they'd have to invalidate a lot of ballots to get there. Fail in one, and you lose anyway. Also, if you assume electronic modification of ballots, how do you identify the ones that are invalid?

This would not fail to provoke Republican counter-challenges in states like New Hampshire and Minnesota, so you'd have more states in play then.

This would also cost a mint (states charge on a per-ballot basis for recounts, varies by state). Stuff would be found that has been relatively secretive until this point - such as the dead vote and illegal alien voting. This would possibly - in fact probably provoke an armed response at this point. I'm not kidding about the armed response bit. Tempers are on edge here, and if you think the Democrats are the only ones angry, you're not taking into account that the Republicans are just more disciplined in general. Also, better armed.

Last point - the House would just vote Trump into office anyway if there were this disaster going on and no one were sure about the electors. Each state gets a vote, and each state's House delegation would vote internally on their collective vote.

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Re:Why won't Democrats support the outcome? by clonehappy · 2016-11-23 03:47 · Score: 2, Informative

What's "pants on head" stupid is that the only time "fraud" is ever a serious concern is when Democrats lose. The same Democrats who belittle and pooh-pooh Republicans who point out actual, in the flesh fraud. Because, remember:

Fraud doesn't exist

I mean just ask Obama: “You are much likelier to get struck by lightning than to have somebody next to you commit voter fraud,” he said. “You’d win the Powerball.”

Re:Yeah, this is a real head-scratcher by swillden · 2016-11-23 03:52 · Score: 5, Informative

She lost in places that don't have the money to buy fancy electronic voting machines because the people are poorer.

No, she lost in places that do have the money to buy fancy electronic voting machines.

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Re: Own It by Anonymous Coward · 2016-11-23 03:57 · Score: 2, Insightful

And by using buzzwords and calling everyone who disagrees with you every -ism in the book, we know you're a Clinton supporter.

Re:Why won't Democrats support the outcome? by clonehappy · 2016-11-23 03:57 · Score: 2

computer science professor who believes that he has evidence that the election was rigged.

I can count on one hand how many professors I've met who aren't Democrat and still have fingers left to pick my nose.

Re:Why won't Democrats support the outcome? by Rei · 2016-11-23 04:13 · Score: 5, Insightful

Meh, it's the standard difference between the parties' approach, and I'd be shocked if you didn't actually know why.

* Republicans focus on voter fraud because stricter restrictions on what people need to vote most often discourage or prevent youth and minority turnout.
* Democrats focus on disenfranchisement, not fraud, for precisely the same reason.

To be fair to Democrats, cases of confirmed voter fraud are exceedingly rare (31 cases between 2000 and 2014 - rarer than being struck by lightning), while cases of confirmed erroneous disenfranchisement are not (tens of thousands erroneously removed from the rolls). The reason that voter fraud (impersonation) is rare is because the risks vastly exceed the reward. You don't throw an election by casting one extra vote for your candidate at the risk of facing a $10k fine and jailtime if you're caught - per case. Even most of the extremely-reported cases of "dead people voting" in recent history have turned out to be clerical errors (e.g. wrong date on the death certificate). With millions of people dying every year, these sorts of errors will happen at a given rate every election.

As for the particular example of Voter ID laws: Not everyone in the US has a photo ID. Those who don't are proportionally younger (e.g. haven't registered yet, haven't gotten a driving license yet, etc), poorer (no money for a car so no driving license; not traveling so no need for passport, etc), often minorities, Native Americans, etc - groups that tend to be overwhelmingly Democrats. So it shouldn't be much of a surprise that Republicans support these laws and Democrats oppose them. The courts have generally gone against them because they proportionally disenfranchise certain groups, and more to the point were often explicitly planned to do so. In the case of North Carolina, for example, the legislature explicitly requested data on different methods of voting by race, and then explicitly crafted legislation to target African Americans based on that data.

If the US could get its act together and issue everyone a national ID, the situation would be different. But I know Americans are often against things like national IDs involving national databases and other scary things.

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Wingus, Dingus! Listen up!

One question by PopeRatzo · 2016-11-23 04:15 · Score: 5, Insightful

If Donald Trump had gotten 2 million more popular votes than Hillary Clinton and still lost the election, would he and his supporters have accepted it graciously and not claimed fraud?

Hell, Trump was claiming fraud before the election even took place.

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You are welcome on my lawn.

Re:One question by whathappenedtomonday · 2016-11-23 09:01 · Score: 2

beside the point? It would have been wrong for him to do it, and so it'd be equally wrong for her to do it. There's nothing wrong with saying "we need to check this" afterwards -- this is far from claiming "it's all rigged anyway!" before. That said, Trump claimed it's all rigged, so to do it i.e. check if there way any rigging would not only not be wrong, it would be the one and only way to show that nothing was rigged. It's like a challenge flag vs. a coach shouting "the game's rigged" before it even started.

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Re:Own It by shaitand · 2016-11-23 04:16 · Score: 2

You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe you should see a doctor.

I say she goes for it by rsilvergun · 2016-11-23 04:16 · Score: 2, Interesting

As someone utterly terrified by a Trump presidency and the damage it's going to do I say she goes for it. The point isn't to win, it's to bog down the Trump administration to limit the damage he can do. The Repubs did it to Obama (though I'd argue Obama was actually trying to Govern where Trump is just the world's largest scam). As the saying goes, this is how the sausage is made.

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A lying Trump supporter? who would have thought? by Brannon · 2016-11-23 04:42 · Score: 4, Funny

Hillary Clinton gave a concession speech. It was watched by millions of people. Learn to use Google--it's accessible via your Breitbart box.

Re: Own It by Sir_Eptishous · 2016-11-23 04:44 · Score: 5, Insightful

Actually I didn't vote for Clinton, but I did listen closely to what Trump said.
Anyone with any modicum of reasoning could figure out pretty quick that he isn't cut out for being POTUSA.

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Politifact rated claims of rigging "Pants on Fire" by mi · 2016-11-23 05:02 · Score: 4, Informative

If Politifact rejects claims of rigging, then they just can not be true, can they be?

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In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.

Re: Own It by BarbaraHudson · 2016-11-23 05:08 · Score: 2, Informative

And anyone who has followed politics in the last 2 decades knows that Clinton is in the back pocket of the corporations and wall street, same as her hubby was. You want the kleptocracy to continue?

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Re:Own It by shaitand · 2016-11-23 05:12 · Score: 2

No, I meant it. You have a lot of hate in your heart. You should be treated by a doctor.

Bad statistics by Geoffrey.landis · 2016-11-23 05:18 · Score: 4, Informative

Nope.

The p-value you "calculate" is not for the hypothesis "the election was hacked." It is for the hypothesis "counties with electronic-only voting machines vote differently than counties with paper-trail voting machines." One, but only one, explanation for why they might be different is that the electronic, but not the paper trail, voting machines were hacked. The other explanation, not ruled out, is that the type of voting machine is indicative of counties that are different in other ways as well.

Also, I note that you are "computing" p-values without actually looking at data-- basically, you're recycling rumors. What is the standard deviation by county for counties that have electronic-only voting, and what is the deviation for counties that don't? You don't have that data. So, you actually can't calculate statistics.

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Who would benefit-- us, but not the parties by Geoffrey.landis · 2016-11-23 05:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

Actually, America's interests would be served by doing a recount of some portio of the ballots to verify accuracy. Quite apart from who won, it's valuable to check, check, and check again to verify if there is an error or tampering.

But, yes, it may not be in the Democratic Party's best interest. Although to be frank, they are already being labelled "sore losers" despite conceding the election and explicitly instructing their supporters to accept the results, so I doubt it would make any difference in how they are perceived.

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Re:Who would benefit-- us, but not the parties by Layzej · 2016-11-23 05:34 · Score: 5, Insightful

Actually, America's interests would be served by doing a recount of some portion of the ballots to verify accuracy. Quite apart from who won, it's valuable to check, check, and check again to verify if there is an error or tampering.
How is it possible that this is not done as a matter of course?
Re:Who would benefit-- us, but not the parties by Verdatum · 2016-11-23 06:14 · Score: 2

It costs money, and there's no point in rigging an election and very little point to check to see if there is rigging in an election if that rigging is not sufficient to alter the outcome. Plenty of states already have laws regarding automatic recounts if the results are within a certain degree of closeness.
Re:Who would benefit-- us, but not the parties by Bartles · 2016-11-23 08:06 · Score: 5, Informative

It is done as a matter of course. That's why most states have not certified their results yet.

1 conservative says Clinton was classy by raymorris · 2016-11-23 06:39 · Score: 2, Interesting

> They are already being labelled "sore losers" despite conceding the election and explicitly instructing their supporters to accept the results

I'm sure SOMEBODY in the world called SOME Democrat a sore loser based on something they said. As one Slashdot's resident conservatives, I applauded Mrs. Clinton's concession speech. I post to Facebook about twice a year, and one of those was "Clinton showed some class this this morning". I thought it was worth bringing attention to her response to the election, which was more "statesman-like" than many politicians.

I'm 40 by rsilvergun · 2016-11-23 06:52 · Score: 3, Insightful

I'm not a "precious little snowflake". So go f' yourself. I have legitimate reasons to fear Trump, to wit:

1. Repeal ACA. I have friends who depend on the medicare expansion to live. One's a Type-1 diabetic who until Obamacare didn't have enough insulin. Almost died a few times. He's 8 years older now and probably gonna die the next time.

2. End of Roe v Wade. My daughter has several congenital problems that might some day necessitate an abortion. Mike Pence would rather see her flown into God's embrace than risk the sin that is Abortion. Yeah, I'm being flippant by putting it that way, but it doesn't make it less true.

3. Cash repatriation. Got a job? Got friends with jobs? Prepare for the biggest round of layoffs since the .com bust as companies bring trillions of dollars back to the USA in the wake of Trump tax cuts letting them off scott free and promptly embark on the biggest Merchants & Acquisitions buying spree in history. Oh, and look forward to prices skyrocketing as competition basically ends.

I could go on and on. Trump supporters who aren't millionaires are all fucked, and they've dragged me and my family and friends along for the ride. If you see a train coming your way and you can't get out of the way because of a gaggle of morons any sane person would react with fear.

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Full article by Anonymous Coward · 2016-11-23 07:43 · Score: 4, Informative

Nate has since turned it into a full article:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/demographics-not-hacking-explain-the-election-results/

Butt Hurt Democrats unable to find evidence of hac by LeftCoastThinker · 2016-11-23 07:45 · Score: 2, Informative

Republicans have been for a long time calling for voter ID, voting machines to be made only in the US for US elections, and open source code that can be independently reviewed for security and accuracy, along with an online validation system that ties your voter ID to the vote, so you can log on and verify that your vote has been properly counted. It is the Democrats that are the party of criminals (8:1, look it up) the party of dead voters, the party of voter fraud, the party of illegal alien voters, the party of pay to vote (a la free booze for homeless etc.), the party of busing mental deficients to polling places, the party of basically any kind of voter fraud you can think of, and some you probably couldn't. I am not a huge fan of Trump, but his message resonated: "I am just a guy, a successful business owner, who is sick of Washington politics. They are wrecking the country and destroying the middle class. Vote for me, warts and all and I will clean house and try to get the country back to where it was in 1985."

If you are paying attention, it already seems pretty clear from his changing positions that he is not a radical guy and he can be persuaded by reasonable arguments. Democrats need to stop believing their own propaganda. The election is over. Time to sack up and judge Trump's actions.

As far as the 7% differential, in a vacuum that is absolutely meaningless and is just a bunch of butt hurt losers. If you can find counties that voted only for Trump (like the counties that voted 100% for Obama in previous elections) or that every voting machine county voted EXACTLY 7% (hint, they didn't) or other real statistical anomalies, then you can allege hacking. The real headline should read: "Butt hurt Democrats unable to find any hacking in election machines, still bitching about losing."

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Ummm...yeah by erp_consultant · 2016-11-23 08:03 · Score: 3, Informative

Isn't this the same group that assured all the voters that the election results could not possibly be manipulated when Trump suggest just that, prior to the election? And the same group that, given Hilary's higher popular vote numbers, are calling for the abolition of the Electoral College?

I think that Wolf Blitzer and the rest of the CNN crew and still grumpy that Hillary lost. Well get over it Wolfie - you got your ass handed to you. Despite your one sided reporting and thinly veiled rooting for Hillary you lost.

CNN and MSNBC and others are just pissed off that they have been exposed as surrogates of the Democrat party. I think that a lot of people have long suspected that is the case but now it is in full view. If you want to hear Democrat cheerleaders then go to CNN or MSNBC. If you want to hear Republican cheerleaders then go to FOX. If you want the actual truth, you know that thing that used to be called "news", then you are going to have to go to a variety of web sites and other outlets and try to filter out all the political BS. That's what the world has come to.

Re:Very flawed legal analysis by Crashmarik · 2016-11-23 10:44 · Score: 5, Insightful

Here you go
1. She set up an email server with the intent to avoid document retention and freedom of information laws.
2. She used the server to store and transmit material with above top secret clearance. In violation of federal law and agreements she signed.
3. When legally subpoenaed for the email she destroyed the information. In violation of laws regarding obstruction of justice
4. She lied under oath about what she did and the circumstances around what she did. That's perjury.

That help ?

Re:Very flawed legal analysis by Darinbob · 2016-11-23 12:31 · Score: 4, Insightful

The first point is not a fact. Once you assign motivations you are engaging in supposition and are no longer dealing with facts.

Re:Very flawed legal analysis by Jayfar · 2016-11-23 17:11 · Score: 2

Except it doesn't work that way once you are the POTUS.

https://news.clearancejobs.com...

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Clinton Urged To Challenge Election Results Due To Possible Hacking [Update] (cnn.com)

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