Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[PassedOut]

Did you just move the goalposts? What level of fraud would you designate as "rampant" fraud? The popular vote difference was, what, 2-3%? Would that be rampant?

Are you serious? 37% of the precincts showing more votes than voters! That is not some random machine error.

I live in Michigan and have worked elections here.

 

Voters come in, fill out paper slips, and show their identification. Poll workers look them up on a computer printout, issue a numbered ballot, and mark a poll book to show that the voter has been issued that ballot. There are procedures for issuing a substitute ballot if one is spoiled (usually because of an overvote detected by the scanner), and also for a provisional ballot in case the voter believes the computer printout is incorrect in not showing that voter as registered and eligible.

 

Often things can get very hectic, much of the process is manual, and it is not uncommon for slight mismatches between the optical scan count and the counts of the manual entries made by the poll workers. There is an end-of-day reconciliation process to account for that. Poll workers always include both democrats and republicans.

 

I looked up the results for Wayne County for the 2016 election:

 

270 precincts  no mismatch
77 precincts  +1 vote
62 precincts  +2 votes
37 precincts  +3 votes
20 precincts  +4 votes
52 precincts  +5 or more votes
81 precincts  -1 vote
29 precincts  -2 votes
19 precincts  -3 votes
 7 precincts  -4 votes
 8 precincts  -5 or more votes

 

In no precinct were there more votes than registered voters.

 

As I said earlier, I'm not a democrat, but facts are facts. These figures don't reflect well on some of the poll workers (and it's not easy to get highly qualified people to work elections), but I just don't understand how you or anyone else has looked at these numbers and portrayed them as "rampant voter fraud."

 

What's your angle in doing so?

[mikeh]

Did you just move the goalposts? What level of fraud would you designate as "rampant" fraud? The popular vote difference was, what, 2-3%? Would that be rampant?

 

2-3% would indeed be rampant....it would be millions of votes....millions of fraudsters, so...yes....that would be rampant.

 

Any degree of fraud that has any reasonable likelihood of changing the result of an election would maybe not be 'rampant' as such but would be significant, and there was no evidence....none...that any presidential election since 1960 was determined by fraud. 1960 was still a time of 'machine' politics in many big cities, and there was certainly some doubt as to how legitimate the voting in Chicago was, at the time. Nixon might not have won anyway, but having Chicago in the bag can't have hurt JFK. add in suspicions about Texas, where Lyndon Johnson was an 'old-style' politician, and there were claims that fraud had swung the election. Had Nixon won both Illinois and Texas he would have won 270 electoral votes and won by the narrowest of margins.

 

Btw, California is home to 3MM illegals, a very significant percentage of those in the country. Texas is next, at 1.5MM. Assume that there were 4-5% fraudulent votes, all for Clinton, in those two states....this would be a huge percentage of trump's fevered numbers of fraudulent votes, and surely plausible....if it were illegals, then surely most would be were there were the most illegals?

 

What difference would that make? In Texas, trump won by 8%. In California, HRC won by 30%. Trump is a lunatic, a paranoid narcissistic bully with deep insecurities. What's your excuse for these fantasies?

 

 

 

Are you serious? 37% of the precincts showing more votes than voters! That is not some random machine error.

 

I can't comment on whether the errors were 'random machine errors'. What I can say, having found media articles about the Michigan recount when it happened, and the discrepancies were discovered, is that the discrepancies were indeed because of machine errors.

 

As I understand it, in those precincts where machines were in use, a ballot would be completed and then scanned through a machine. Unfortunately as many as half the machines in any one precinct (tho on average fewer) would jam or break, resulting in the machines not capturing all of the ballots.

 

There is, from the information I was able to find, no suggestion of any deliberate jamming or wrecking of the machines. My own suspicion is that this is what you get from machines that are infrequently used, usually operated by people with only cursory knowledge or training, and in conditions of heavy use. While the articles I reviewed suggested machine error, there were apparently problems due to overloading the machines, suggestive to me, at least, of some degree of human error as well.

 

Edit: I thank PassedOut for finding actual data aas opposed to media stories: apparently the machine breakdowns didn't have much impact anyway (end edit)

 

You know, it is so very difficult to have discussions with most (all?) of the right wing contributors here, since so little of the points they make seem based in reality. Did you, for instance, make any effort to look behind the headline that there were more ballots caast than machine-counted, or did you stop with yout intellectual curiosity as soon as you found a headline that appeared to justify your distorted suggestion that this was evidence of fraud?

 

I would truly enjoy a debate with an informed, honest conservative. I am sure such a person exists somewhere, but nobody meeting that description ever seems to post here, or (for that matter) feature in real world politics. No wonder it is widely believed in many circles that reality has a liberal bias :P In fact, it is, or so it appears, that liberals have a reality-bias, while conservatives have sound-bites, lies, and ignorance.

 

Surprise me: make an evidence-based argument.

[jogs]

The Obama's net worth is $24 to $40 million. They have never had jobs that pay that well. Why is the progressive left not asking how the Obamas accumulated that wealth?

[jogs]

By your Dow gauge, Obama must have been the greatest president ever as he started office with Dow at 7,949.09 and ended his final term with Dow over 19,000.

No. The Obama rally was due solely to easy money. It created this vast income inequality.

[jogs]

 

270 precincts  no mismatch
77 precincts  +1 vote
62 precincts  +2 votes
37 precincts  +3 votes
20 precincts  +4 votes
52 precincts  +5 or more votes
81 precincts  -1 vote
29 precincts  -2 votes
19 precincts  -3 votes
 7 precincts  -4 votes
 8 precincts  -5 or more votes

 

In no precinct were there more votes than registered voters.

 

As I said earlier, I'm not a democrat, but facts are facts. These figures don't reflect well on some of the poll workers (and it's not easy to get highly qualified people to work elections), but I just don't understand how you or anyone else has looked at these numbers and portrayed them as "rampant voter fraud."

 

What's your angle in doing so?

Your numbers prove voter fraud. In the U.S. voter turnout is typically under 55%.

[mikeh]

The Obama's net worth is $24 to $40 million. They have never had jobs that pay that well. Why is the progressive left not asking how the Obamas accumulated that wealth?

They both had jobs at a large, prestigious law firm, I assure you that they made good money. Then Obama wrote a couple of best selling books (and several other books as well. I suspect he did ok there.

 

Then he has made a reasonable income the last 8 years with, I imagine, relatively few direct living expenses :D

 

You know, this is exactly the problem I have been bemoaning: right wingers appear to lack any ability to look behind the little headlines that resonate with them. Thinking critically about the stuff they write seems beyond them.

 

btw, you have continued to prove your lack of intellect. Passed Out's figures were the differences between hand counted ballots (issued ballots) and machine counted ballots, which was in response to your fellow right wing poster's dishonest claim that there was widespread voter fraud in Wayne County

[ldrews]

I looked up the results for Wayne County for the 2016 election:

 

270 precincts no mismatch

77 precincts +1 vote

62 precincts +2 votes

37 precincts +3 votes

20 precincts +4 votes

52 precincts +5 or more votes

81 precincts -1 vote

29 precincts -2 votes

19 precincts -3 votes

7 precincts -4 votes

8 precincts -5 or more votes

 

 

 

Yes, thank you PassedOut. I had not seen this data. It did take me a little while to find it myself even with your trailblazing. The data does refute any suggestion of bias. It is amazing that Detroit had so many problems. Clearly the Detroit/Michigan voting methodology can stand improvement.

 

If similar evidence can be made available for the assertion of "illegals" voting in California and other similar states then it could be shown that Trump is indeed delusional regarding the popular vote. Since he is now our President for the next 4 years, I sincerely hope that that is the extent of his delusions.

[PassedOut]

Your numbers prove voter fraud. In the U.S. voter turnout is typically under 55%.

I didn't give turnout percentages, but they vary by location and election. My county, which is quite conservative, had a turnout of almost 64% last November. Wayne County had a turnout of 58.6%, down considerably from 2012.

[Winstonm]

Did you just move the goalposts? What level of fraud would you designate as "rampant" fraud? The popular vote difference was, what, 2-3%? Would that be rampant?

 

3=5 million votes would be rampant.

[kenberg]

Now that the President of the United States has asserted that there is massive election fraud, we have to deal with it. How this is dealt with will tell us a lot. I am sure it would be possible to find people who are well respected for ability and for having an open mind, known for impartiality and integrity, to conduct this investigation. We will see if that is what we get.

 

In my view, we should try hard not to have this be a total waste of time and money. In this age of hacking, some serious suggestions from knowledgeable people regarding cybersecurity of voting would be welcome.

 

 

Some thoughts:

When I moved from Minnesota to Maryland, I registered to vote in Maryland. I never made any effort to cancel my registration in Minnesota. I came here in 1967, I voted here in 1968. It never crossed my mind to fly back to Minnesota and vote again.

I am guessing, I confess that I don't know, that a properly conducted investigation will demonstrate to all but the most determined that voter fraud is not widespread. The reward would not at all be worth the risk for individual voters, and a massive organized effort would seem to be difficult to carry out without detection. The risk of cyber tampering seems like a more likely future threat, and I hope that a serious committee would take a look at how best to deal with this. One suggestion might be to stop wasting money on stupid investigations and spend it instead on state of the art cyber-protection.

 

For whatever it is worth, here is a story from the old days, 1958 I think. In college I worked regularly but I also picked up odd jobs, sort of one night stands. One was "delivering ballots". After the polls closed on election day, I would drive to the polling place, pick up boxes of ballots, as yet uncounted as far as I know, and delver them to a central location for counting. Voting age was 21 so I was not even old enough to vote. I suppose I could have tampered. I didn't. And, reflecting on my above thoughts, why would I? I was doing this for the money I was being paid, not for the chance to influence a Senate race. If I wanted a payoff from some Dem or Rep for tampering, I would have had no idea ho to do this and surely would have been arrested while trying. This is not something I considered and rejected, I just did as I was told and go paid.

 

Anyway, we will see who is appointed to do this investigation and how it is conducted. If the charge is serious then the investigation must be serious. You can probably tell that I am very skeptical of the whole enterprise, but we shall see.

[cloa513]

Now that the President of the United States has asserted that there is massive election fraud, we have to deal with it. How this is dealt with will tell us a lot. I am sure it would be possible to find people who are well respected for ability and for having an open mind, known for impartiality and integrity, to conduct this investigation. We will see if that is what we get.

 

In my view, we should try hard not to have this be a total waste of time and money. In this age of hacking, some serious suggestions from knowledgeable people regarding cybersecurity of voting would be welcome.

 

 

Some thoughts:

When I moved from Minnesota to Maryland, I registered to vote in Maryland. I never made any effort to cancel my registration in Minnesota. I came here in 1967, I voted here in 1968. It never crossed my mind to fly back to Minnesota and vote again.

I am guessing, I confess that I don't know, that a properly conducted investigation will demonstrate to all but the most determined that voter fraud is not widespread. The reward would not at all be worth the risk for individual voters, and a massive organized effort would seem to be difficult to carry out without detection. The risk of cyber tampering seems like a more likely future threat, and I hope that a serious committee would take a look at how best to deal with this. One suggestion might be to stop wasting money on stupid investigations and spend it instead on state of the art cyber-protection.

 

For whatever it is worth, here is a story from the old days, 1958 I think. In college I worked regularly but I also picked up odd jobs, sort of one night stands. One was "delivering ballots". After the polls closed on election day, I would drive to the polling place, pick up boxes of ballots, as yet uncounted as far as I know, and delver them to a central location for counting. Voting age was 21 so I was not even old enough to vote. I suppose I could have tampered. I didn't. And, reflecting on my above thoughts, why would I? I was doing this for the money I was being paid, not for the chance to influence a Senate race. If I wanted a payoff from some Dem or Rep for tampering, I would have had no idea ho to do this and surely would have been arrested while trying. This is not something I considered and rejected, I just did as I was told and go paid.

 

Anyway, we will see who is appointed to do this investigation and how it is conducted. If the charge is serious then the investigation must be serious. You can probably tell that I am very skeptical of the whole enterprise, but we shall see.

 

You have to remember there is a how bucreacracy that doesn't what to see any problems- just look at the recent statement by federal electoral official- we don't see any credible issues- so there are really are problem but they don't see it as that.

Your case just demonstrates how easy to commit fraud. Its doesn't take a big conspiracy to commit electoral fraud- one guy in few key electorates who votes hundreds of times using - paid from a slush fund set up in way for deniability- paid for electoral services. Democratic Party associates admitted on Veritas camera that they would anything to win and detailed some of illegal ways they'd do it.

[mike777]

Poster after poster after poster shows how the President is a liar

dont look at my posts ...look at their posts

 

 

I lost count over how many crimes and misdemeanors they quote...

 

 

Where is impeachment...even if it fails....

 

 

At some point posters come across as just wanting to show how righteous they are

at some point these posts become more about posters

 

 

-------------------

 

I need to make sure my posts are not so selfish

---------------------------

 

 

at some point I need to make sure my anti trump bias is a bit more open to he may not be a racist fascist antijew pig

[Zelandakh]

As I understand it, in those precincts where machines were in use, a ballot would be completed and then scanned through a machine. Unfortunately as many as half the machines in any one precinct (tho on average fewer) would jam or break, resulting in the machines not capturing all of the ballots.

 

There is, from the information I was able to find, no suggestion of any deliberate jamming or wrecking of the machines. My own suspicion is that this is what you get from machines that are infrequently used, usually operated by people with only cursory knowledge or training, and in conditions of heavy use.

It seems to me that having faulty machines placed in poor districts is an excellent way of creating even longer queues and ultimately in reducing the turnout there. In other words, I can easily imagine that there is an incentive for some districts to have these problems. If we want to get into voter a discussion of voter fraud, I would have thought that such voter suppression tactics would be an area with much higher numbers and a far greater impact on this election. For local elections, gerrymandering is also an obvious candidate and is in some cases as extreme in America as any country in the world.

 

I suspect this is really the point though. Think back a little while and you will remember that the discussion over the election was centered on Russian involvement. Now we are talking about voter fraud. Trump has successfully controlled the agenda. This is what all good politicians try to do - a few lies thrown in to achieve that end is just par for the course.

[kenberg]

You have to remember there is a how bucreacracy that doesn't what to see any problems- just look at the recent statement by federal electoral official- we don't see any credible issues- so there are really are problem but they don't see it as that.

Your case just demonstrates how easy to commit fraud. Its doesn't take a big conspiracy to commit electoral fraud- one guy in few key electorates who votes hundreds of times using - paid from a slush fund set up in way for deniability- paid for electoral services. Democratic Party associates admitted on Veritas camera that they would anything to win and detailed some of illegal ways they'd do it.

 

I agree that it could happen. "Vote early and often" is an old joke. and like many jokes perhaps is based on some reality. I strongly doubt that there is much there there, but the president asserts that there is, and now we will investigate.

 

It was cleverly said after the election that Trump's opponents took him literally but not seriously, his supporters took him seriously but not literally. Now he is president. I expect to take a president, any president, both seriously and literally. I am finding this difficult to do, but I think it would be a disaster to ever get to the point where what the president says is simply written off as another 2 am tweet, no need to take it either seriously or literally.

 

I don't really care how many people came in to see the inauguration. I live in the area and it was rainy and chilly, not a great day. I can let that pass. But he has also said that NATO is obsolete, that he doesn't care what happens with the EU, and that our elections are plagued by massive fraud. The guy is president. This means people will be listening to what he says and acting on it. The correct action for a serious charge of voter fraud is a thorough investigation led by people of unquestioned integrity.

 

I don't care about the size of Trump's hands, but he has a very big mouth. . In the past I could avoid this by not tuning in The Apprentice. We no longer can ignore what he says, so let's get the investigation up and going. In this country we have had serious investigations looking into serious problems, and we have had witch hunts. We shall see how this investigation goes. Who is chosen to lead it will be crucial.

 

And the final report of thie blue-ribbon committee must be released directly to the people, unfiltered by any political body.

[Vampyr]

Trump had said if he lost it would be due voter fraud, and now he has won but is claiming it is due to fraud the that he (seemingly!) lost the popular vote.

 

When is he going to claim that it was voter fraud that stopped him from winning the 95% margins that dictators in one-party states achieve?

 

One thing is pretty important -- those of you who live in states with onerous voter-registration laws have to start or join organisations that will assist people getting registered.

[sharon j]

[barmar]

The correct action for a serious charge of voter fraud is a thorough investigation led by people of unquestioned integrity.

So now that he's POTUS, anything he pulls out of his ass has to be considered a "serious charge", worthy of spending lots of money on a thorough investigation? No justification required, just his suspicion?

 

Police have to have "reasonable cause" to detain someone for questioning, get a search warrant, etc. If he tweeted that Ken Berg is a terrorist, with no supporting evidence, would that be enough to send you to Guantanamo?

[y66]

Trump had said if he lost it would be due voter fraud, and now he has won but is claiming it is due to fraud the that he (seemingly!) lost the popular vote.

 

When is he going to claim that it was voter fraud that stopped him from winning the 95% margins that dictators in one-party states achieve?

 

One thing is pretty important -- those of you who live in states with onerous voter-registration laws have to start or join organisations that will assist people getting registered.

Good idea. The Brennan Center For Justice is a good place to start.

[Winstonm]

The guy in the WH that most scares me is not Trump but Bannon. Like a background ghost of Dick Cheney, only intelligent rather than simply belligerent.

 

Edit: I would not put it past Bannon to introduce a double-agent-like fake leaker from inside the WH, with the sole purpose of discrediting main stream news sources as reliable. I think the executive actions to shutdown agency information also has Bannon's fingerprints all over it.

 

This is what made me think about a possible fake leaker and its ramifications.

[johnu]

Are there Trump supporters here who can say how they're reacting to his claims about the inauguration attendance? How do you maintain your trust in someone who spouts such total BS?

 

I can state with authority that there were nearly 2 million people at the Trump inauguration which breaks all attendance records. You have to take out a magnifying glass to see clearly, but all the white spaces you see are actually 1 million+ Klansmen standing so close together that their white sheets all blend together. There are also a 1/2 million Trump Super-supporter A-Listers (ie the SA's) standing in formation on the brown spaces surrounding the white spaces. You also have to look very closely since for unknown reasons, they all decided to wear the same colored brown suits that day.

[hrothgar]

Oh look... Trump just sacked the senior career staff at the state department...

[ldrews]

Oh look... Trump just sacked the senior career staff at the state department...

 

I thought I read that those sacked were political appointees, not career civil servants. Isn't that standard procedure whenever a new administration of a different party comes into power?

[kenberg]

So now that he's POTUS, anything he pulls out of his ass has to be considered a "serious charge", worthy of spending lots of money on a thorough investigation? No justification required, just his suspicion?

 

Police have to have "reasonable cause" to detain someone for questioning, get a search warrant, etc. If he tweeted that Ken Berg is a terrorist, with no supporting evidence, would that be enough to send you to Guantanamo?

 

Here is the problem as I see it: Until now, people have always treated what the POTUS says as serious. They pay close attention to his exact words. If there is a slight unexpected nuance they analyze it in detail to see if it means a shift in US policy. The same is done woth other major leaders. Well, that's gone. Trump pulls something out of his ass or out of the sky or wherever, he tweets it and people say "Well, that's just the way he is, don't take him seriously". It comes at us so fast it is impossible to keep up with it. I gather i that in an interview with the Washingrton Post he was talking about health care and said that he would arrange it so that everyone would have insurance. The his various nominees for this and that explained he didn't mean that literally. Then he explained that he did.

 

I think it is a very bad thing for nobody to have any idea of when, if ever, they can take what he says both literally and seriously.

 

So I am thinking this stuff with voter fraud could be a test case. I am assuming that most Rs and most Ds in the House and in the Senate are not total morons. If they are, the game is over. So suppose that they are not. I doubt very much that they believe that there were 3 to 5 million fraudulent votes cast, unless the lower number in 3 to 5 million is just 3 rather than 3 million. I suggest pushing on them here. The choices, and I think that they can see this, are (1) fund a fake investigation, chaired by Priebus, with a conclusion known from the start, that he would have won the popular vote if not for massive fraud or (2) do an honest investigation carried out by individuals dedicated to getting the truth, whatever it is. . Doing (2) will require a lot of time and money, and it will require getting people involved who are very broadly trusted. The key identifying feature of a type (2) investigation is that nobody will be able to predict with certainty what their conclusion will be.

 

I am thinking that at least a fair number of Rs would gag at (1), and would see that the consequences of (2), while not known with certainty, are apt to make them look very foolish for pursuing such a waste of time and money.

 

I am certainly open to other options. But I think that reasonable people of any party can see that having a president spouting random BS is not good for the country. Saying that "yes we will do an investigation but it has to be a serious one rather than an indulgence in one man's fantasy" could bring people of various political views face to face with reality.

[kenberg]

At the risk of boring everyone, I want to cite another conservative, this time the very conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer

 

An excerpt:

 

No more, declared Trump: "From this day forward, it's going to be only America First."

 

Imagine how this resonates abroad. "America First" was the name of the organization led by Charles Lindbergh that bitterly fought FDR before U.S. entry into World War II — right through the Battle of Britain — to keep America neutral between Churchill's Britain and Hitler's Reich. (Then came Pearl Harbor. Within a week, America First dissolved itself in shame.)

 

Not that Trump was consciously imitating Lindbergh. I doubt he was even aware of the reference. He just liked the phrase. But I can assure you that in London and in every world capital they are aware of the antecedent and the intimations of a new American isolationism. Trump gave them good reason to think so, going on to note "the right of all nations to put their own interests first." America included.

 

 

 

Yes! Even adolescent Ken, more interested in girls, cars and mathematics (in some order) than in history, learned about Lindbergh and the America First movement. Of course it reverberates. With me, and I am sure very strongly in Europe. Rightly or wrongly, CK says "Not that Trump was consciously imitating Lindbergh. I doubt he was even aware of the reference." So we have people in London and elsewhere wondering what the hell to make of this channeling of Lindbergh while at home people are saying we should not take him literally, or not take him seriously, or something. . Well, it is time to decide just how we should take him. I see him as a guy who loves to shoot off his mouth, thinking first be damned. Bad enough as a candidate, seriously awful as a president.

[Winstonm]

The best political move for Democrats is to assure the Republicans own and be shown to be responsible for creating this monstrosity.

 

Just in case there is doubt that Bannon is the most frightening figure in the WH.