<i>Once more unto the breach…</i><p>Looks like we're about to have the same voting/election discussion we've had at least 6 times over the past month or so (most recently a day ago). If anyone's interested in reading what's already been discussed, here are links to the previous threads:<p>"Edward Snowden Demonstrates How Easy It Is to Hack a Voting Machine"
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13032199" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13032199</a><p>"American Elections Will Be Hacked" <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12921967" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12921967</a><p>"Maryland will audit all votes cast in general election" <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12885396" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12885396</a><p>"Cylance Discloses Voting Machine Vulnerability" <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883356" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883356</a><p>"In Pennsylvania, Claims of a Rigged Election May Be Impossible to Disprove" <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12790247" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12790247</a><p>"Votes could be counted as fractions instead of as whole numbers" <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12841178" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12841178</a>
This is similar to what Nate Silver put out earlier (as mentioned in the article). The difference in voting to each candidate by county and voting machine type is completely explained by the population distribution in those counties.<p>In Wisconsin, the counties that used paper ballots tended to be less white and better educated. That's why Clinton got more votes there, probably. It is unlikely that there is real widespread tampering.<p>That said, there is still good reason to audit all national elections. They're quite important, after all. The mad dash to say who won really quickly does a disservice to the process, IMO.
Has anyone noted that Trump sounding off about election rigging is a perfect ploy for one who knew the election would be rigged in their favor?<p>In response, the opposition made strong claims that elections cannot be rigged, in spite of the verified evidence of experts that they can be rigged.<p>Net result: Trump wins an 'upset' election, that was actually rigged in his favor, whilst the opposition cannot bring itself to claim that is was rigged, as that would be a contradiction of their earlier defense of the voting system's integrity.<p>There already exists a flawless system for ensuring 100% accurate voting results: a distributed consensus network utilizing a public block chain. Voters get assigned public/private key pairs upon registration. Their vote is a simple transaction on the blockchain which they can validate anytime they want.
I don't think this article adds anything to the discussion. It repeats Halderman's earlier point.<p><i>the important point is that all elections should be audited, and not only if you have statistics suggesting that something might be fishy.</i><p>And repeats other conclusions which say that there are no signs of something fishy in the currently available data, at least based on initial statistical analyses.
In 2013, the supreme court struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act. As a result, "fourteen states had new voting restrictions in place for the first time in 2016. [...] This was the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act." [0]<p>For instance, this was the first election in Wisconsin where voters were required to show a photo ID, a measure which barred 300,000 people from voting. Trump's margin of victory in Wisconsin was only 22,525 votes.<p>In addition to voter suppression, there were also large unexplained discrepancies between exit polls and vote counts. [1]<p>[0] <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/the-gops-attack-on-voting-rights-was-the-most-under-covered-story-of-2016/" rel="nofollow">https://www.thenation.com/article/the-gops-attack-on-voting-...</a><p>[1] <a href="http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/can-we-count-election-results-exit-poll-discrepancies-and-voter-suppression-are" rel="nofollow">http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/can-we-count-election-...</a>
A bit off topic but: our country has a real problem that was hit home last night by a comment made by a dinner guest. He is a democrat (my wife and I are also registered democrats) and was over joyed at the prospect of a recount and/or electoral college delegates putting Clinton in the White House.<p>I pointed out how disruptive this would be to the country and the fact that Clinton has acknowledged that Trump won, and that Trump will probably end up with close to 2/3 of the electoral votes, kind of a landslide. I stated that we could have mass violence in this country if the election were overturned this late after the election.<p>Our friend said that mass violence was better than a Trump presidency, which seems like a really stupid point of view. I find it troubling that his view seems to be reflected by many people. In my opinion, we should respect the office of presidency, give Trump a "honeymoon" period to see what he actually does, and most importantly, get very politically active before the next interim elections.
The whole reason people think it's fraud is because the media led people to think that Hillary couldn't possibly lose. When she lost, people started looking for an explanation.