Electronic Voting Machines

[SirBrockington]

Is “everyone” just going to again say they exit polls were “wrong”? Do we just take for granted that a Democrat has to be up in polls 6-7 points so that they can’t outright win without suspicion? How many times have a Republican won when they were down in polls and exit polls 1 or 2 points and upset the Democrat versus how many times the oppossite was true?

How does a Republican Governor win in my home state of MD, one of the bluest states in the country, with the dem candidate up 7 in polls day of the election? How many Republican governors are there in blue states, vs how many democrats are governors in heavy red states? Shouldn’t that alone set off alarms? Is anyone in the media going to follow up on a dossier by the women (who was arrested and locked up, cannot remember her name) that stated proof that election tabulation was compromised? Why wouldn’t the Russians hack tabulation? They were thorough enough to hack DU... that seems like no stone unturned and very thorough..

At what point do Republicans taking 1000 Statehouse positions in 8 years raise some concerns regarding the methods or some additional examination? Why is there a constant skewering every election of between 2 to 5 points consistently in the direction of republicans? Why isn’t it a immediate tell that the election tabulation is being manipulated extensively when republicans have never discussed the security of the machines and tabulations when they cause holy hell whenever they believe any other candidate may have even the slightest edge? They change laws regarding cases of unverified cases involving voting fraud, with cases in entire states of less than 20 people, but regarding integrity of voting machines and tabulation...nothing to see over there...

At what point are the “smart” people going to look at this matter????? How many more elections need to be suspect? And why were recorded paper ballots fine for the first 200 plus years of this country but needed to be changed? How else could the Republican Party ensure maintaining control? Isn’t it odd that the exact number to reach three separate states was achieved, Blue states, and equaled less than 80,000 total? That’s not suspicious? What would be the statistical likelyhood of that on top of the probability that those states would have been won, in addition to exit polling. Why were the results “just enough” but not big enough of a margin to create suspicion?

I’m done

[SoCalMusicLover]

1. It's Not Who Votes, It's Who Counts The Votes

Elections are merely present to make us think that our votes matter. They Must continue that illusion, even though in reality, results can be manipulated to achieve the goal of those with the power to do so.

The political system counts on people thinking their votes count, but they don't.

[SirBrockington]

3. Stalin said that 50 plus years ago

I have no idea why the Dem party haven’t even at the very least investigated this. I mean ffs

[DFW]

2. Republicans no longer even bother to conceal their Stalinist views on elections:

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."

[brooklynite]

4. "At what point are the smart people going to look at this matter?"

When actual candidates, campaign managers and Party leaders say vote hacking is a thing. I'll go with their opinion over a bunch of bloggers.

[SirBrockington]

5. A poster used statistical analysis

Awhile ago where the closer the race in purple states or Competitive states the higher the discrepancy between the exit polling and pre polling and actual tabulations. In some cases a 7 point swing. There have been studies by a number of researchers that have shown how easy it is to manipulate results. It’s the skepticism by some Dems and lack of attention that will continue to cause these repeated and consistent descrepancies. Russians were complicit in hacking various elements of institutions related to the 2016 elections but suddenly stopped and had integrity when it consisted of manipulating electronic state-level tabulations when exit polls are/where the only check or balance of voting when there is no actual receipt or paper trail to audit results. How convenient.

At 6 pm on election night it looked like a Clinton landslide. Suddenly the numbers started to change dramatically. Exit polls and internal memos as late as 6 pm showed landslide and I remember Krauthamer going head to head with Oreilly saying there were only a million vit w left in Florida and Large outstanding votes in Blue counties. Du was hacked around 4 so nobody could compare notes and trends, and at 7 those Blue majority counties in Florida and North Carolina started turning Red. Almost simultaneously. Frank Luntz at election evening even stated leaving the repub party. The rats where jumping ship then suddenly.... hmm..all the state level numbers started changing.

[TheFrenchRazor]

7. nothing to see here folks, move along... nt

[mythology]

17. You do realize any exit polls released at that time are

Skewed towards early in the day voting right?

Exit poll conspiracy theories are dumb. They rely on people not understanding the process.

https://www.thenation.com/article/reminder-exit-poll-conspiracy-theories-are-totally-baseless/

[TheFrenchRazor]

8. when there is no investigation, how do you expect the crime to be discovered? there is almost NEVER

NEVER a comprehensive, statewide, HAND-RECOUNT in cases where the elections results appear highly suspicious, so there is conveniently never any "proof." why don't we just count the ballots by hand in the first place, like has been done for hundreds of years?

[brooklynite]

13. I generally wait for someone to report a crime before it's investigated...

If none of the Democrats think their elections were "stolen", I'm willing to go with their determination.

[mythology]

20. For the same reason we don't ride horses.

Wisconsin did mostly hand recount and found no statistical difference between hand and machine recounted counties.

The other problem is that people are very selective in their memories about what is "suspicious". For example anybody who claims the polls were way off in 2016 aren't acknowledging that the polls closed before the election and we're off by less than in 2012.

[TheFrenchRazor]

6. say it. if the machines CAN be hacked, they WILL be hacked. we need all paper ballots, all hand-

hand-counted, all the time.

[Lee-Lee]

10. You realize paper ballots are even easier to hack, right?

It doesn’t even take any skill for a corrupt poll worker to swap some out or add some to a stack.

Between a modern electric machine with safeguards and paper it would be far easier to manipulate paper, and take less skill. That’s why that kind of shit happened before voting machines were ever invented.

The idea paper ballots are somehow more secure is fantasy.

[MrsCoffee]

11. You do realize that those stacks would go through more than one person?

Checks and balances. I’ve worked in a poll center where a hand count was done back in the 90’s. Those ballots were counted and recounted. And it was done in an open environment with all kinds of security and people monitoring.

Sure it’s not foolproof, but it’s 1000 times better than blindly trusting easily hacked and manipulated software that is never verified.

It’s fucking ludicrous to argue against paper ballots.

[Lee-Lee]

12. Your realize electronic machines go through just as stringent procedures, right?

Properly implemented electronic machines and procedures for them actually have not only the same safeguards but more.

Sure, it’s been done badly in the past. So have paper ballots.

That doesn’t mean you throw away what can be a much better system because it was done badly before. I get that many people don’t understand how technology works so fear it and just want what they think they understand, but just because you think you understand it better doesn’t make it safer.

It’s far easier to swap paper ballots or stuf a ballot box than it is for them to manipulate the results inside an electronic system- it takes the same amount of being sneaky to do either, but no special skills to swap out paper and a lot of skill to hack inside a voting machine.

[MrsCoffee]

14. Sure it takes skill... but it just happened on a mass scale here.

We may not have mass reports about it because this administration fought against having any kind of recounts to verify the results. But we have many reports and studies saying that the vote totals were all but mathematically impossible.

It does not take the same amount of sneaky. You don't even have to be in the room or be seen to hack the machine. That's been proven time and again.

You know how they stopped the conservatives from hacking the vote in other countries? Hand counted paper ballots. WE LOST to the conservatives and Russia because our electronic voting machines are absolute shit. That's why we have some counties and states who are tossing them out all together.

Vote by mail and hand counted ballots are the only way this country is going to keep the scum and scammers out of office.

[Lee-Lee]

19. Your idea of what it takes isnt realistic

“You don’t even have to be in the same room to hack the machine”.

That’s simply not true. If you think it is you have been badly mislead in what the issues are here and what the risks and security aspects are.

These machines are not hooked to the internet. It requires gaining physical access to the individual machine and changing the firmware or software.

And changed firmware or software is detectable in audits and testing.

To hack a voting machine requires you to be psychically there with it and either open it up and change hardware or hook an external computer to it and upload new software. That’s a lot more complicated than swapping paper ballots.

[mythology]

21. No it didn't

How is your claim any different than Republicans claiming in person voter fraud is a huge problem with zero evidence?

For your theory to be true, the polls had to be hacked and nobody would have leaked a massive conspiracy that would require hundreds if not thousands of people to pull off. It would also require that the Democratic party effectively be in on a conspiracy to screw the party over.

And then the conspiracy requires that the hackers had to have had the foresight to somehow match the pattern so that the counties in Wisconsin that hand recounted didn't differ from the machine recounted counties.

[Madam45for2923]

15. ACLU Know your voting rights. Report intimidation to 1-866-OUR-VOTE

Link to tweet

[Wounded Bear]

16. Always seemed strange to me...

we can put an ATM on every corner that has a 99.99999999% accuracy, but we can't invent a safe voting machine?

[Botany]

18. And the same company* makes both the voting machine and the ATMs too

* Diebold

Funny my ATM can show me that i bought a pack of gum 5 minutes ago
but a printed out copy of my vote is a no go?

The KY's 2015 Governor's should have been a red flag for all of us.

[mythology]

22. Because voting is anonymous

There is no good way to ensure anonymity if you can directly link a vote to a person. Your bank account is linked to you specifically.

Also if all you get is a slip of paper it would still be trivial to change some number/percentage of votes if you've gone through the difficult process of hacking, both the coding and gaining access.

[Lee-Lee]

23. The machines I vote on here in NC print a hard copy as I go

Not just of the final ballot, but it literally makes a paper record of every action, vote selection, changed vote, going forward and back etc.

[brooklynite]

24. So, the vote hacking software doesn't work in the rain?