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And now... an even bigger mess?

 
 
 
Elixir

Elixir

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"Hillary Clinton is being urged by a group of prominent computer scientists and election lawyers to call for a recount in three swing states won by Donald Trump, New York has learned. The group, which includes voting-rights attorney John Bonifaz and J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, believes they’ve found persuasive evidence that results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked."
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Article

I have mixed feelings - even if there is compelling evidence of something fishy. Do we really need to get into another probably meaningless fracas?
"It would take overturning the results in both Wisconsin (10 Electoral College votes) and Pennsylvania (20 votes), in addition to winning Michigan’s 16, for Clinton to win the Electoral College. There is also the complicating factor of “faithless electors,” or members of the Electoral College who do not vote according to the popular vote in their states. At least six electoral voters have said they would not vote for Trump, despite the fact that he won their states."
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Sure, it would be nice to send Trump packing. The resulting riots etc. - not so much.
What do y'all think?
 
There is only conjecture which is a bit reckless to bring up in the first place. The exit polling in PA, WI, and MI aren't at odds with the outcome of the election.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
There is only conjecture which is a bit reckless to bring up in the first place. The exit polling in PA, WI, and MI aren't at odds with the outcome of the election.
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What's the margin of error of exit polls vs results?

I'm actually more interested in how/whether any kind of interference that could sway the overall result is even possible. There is historical precedent for attempts at it - but that is known mostly because they were unsuccessful.

Alex Halderman

"How might a foreign government hack America’s voting machines to change the outcome of a presidential election? Here’s one possible scenario. First, the attackers would probe election offices well in advance in order to find ways to break into their computers. Closer to the election, when it was clear from polling data which states would have close electoral margins, the attackers might spread malware into voting machines in some of these states, rigging the machines to shift a few percent of the vote to favor their desired candidate. This malware would likely be designed to remain inactive during pre-election tests, do its dirty business during the election, then erase itself when the polls close. A skilled attacker’s work might leave no visible signs — though the country might be surprised when results in several close states were off from pre-election polls."
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Elixir said:
What's the margin of error of exit polls vs results?
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I don't believe that is a viable argument. The exit polls indicated that the results would be close in PA, MI, and WI, edging towards Trump. There is a margin of error, but can't be used as a basis for potential fraud.

I'm actually more interested in how/whether any kind of interference that could sway the overall result is even possible. There is historical precedent for attempts at it - but that is known mostly because they were unsuccessful.
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Consider this, if the Trump group did influence the machines, they did so sparingly. It is hard to imagine that modifying the vote totals by 1% in states he was polling losing by 4 to 6% would have been an ineffective method of fixing an election.

Let's not minimize the impact of claiming vote fixing or manipulation. Trump was making all sorts of claims about this prior to the election and was hammered, by some, for it. Now that he has somehow managed to convince the US (electoral college) to buy a jalopy, that doesn't mean that liberals have carte blanche for making unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
I don't believe that is a viable argument.
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It was a question, not an argument. If the margin of error is very small, that would tend to negate charges of tampering. But if they are well known to be YUUUGE, that opens the door for speculations, wild and otherwise.

Let's not minimize the impact of claiming vote fixing or manipulation. Trump was making all sorts of claims about this prior to the election and was hammered, by some, for it. Now that he has somehow managed to convince the US (electoral college) to buy a jalopy, that doesn't mean that liberals have carte blanche for making unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.
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That is (to me) the most disturbing thing about it. I wish Trump had not won, but it would be even worse for him to have won due to funny business by the Russians or by the RNC, and even worse should that come to light.
Trump does remind me of creationists, though. He has a habit of accusing others of that of which he is guilty, in the grand tradition of creationists repeating "evolution is a myth".
(Before you jump on me for saying that, let me be clear that I don't credit Trump with any personal knowledge of or participation in any such thing - I think he's too much of a buffoon to pull it off.)

Now that he has somehow managed to convince the US (electoral college) to buy a jalopy, that doesn't mean that liberals have carte blanche for making unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.
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When Trump was making claims of a rigged election, there was no evidence to support it, any more than creationists have evidence that evolution is a myth. But the statistical anomalies surrounding the tallies in the states in question are not pure imaginings. I sincerely hope there is a less sinister explanation for them forthcoming, or it could get really ugly. OTOH maybe HRC's people will realize that and decline to pursue it for just that reason.
 
If it was hacked then there certainly should be a prompt investigation.
 
Loren Pechtel said:
If it was hacked then there certainly should be a prompt investigation.
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Yeah welll, I think the HRC supporters who are making noise about it should promise an investigation "just to make sure that if anything untoward occurred, it can't happen again.", and in the same breath, say they accept the results of the election.
 
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