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Be Very Skeptical of Stolen Election Claims
- api 10y agoThe claim has been made by the losing side in every election since Bush II in 2000. I take it as a sign of a widening gulf between political factions.
- Retric 10y agoLandslide elections are far less prone to this. Close elections are closer to a coin flip where small changes may swing an election. Ex: Few people doubted Obama's first election as it was very clear. The vocal minority wanted to question if he was eligible in the first place, not the outcome. You can see clear election 'influence' just look at the number of voting machines vs. voters in different areas and the lines this creates. Even pole closing times have a significant impact. People try to get so close to the line so often there are often court cases about this stuff. The core question is; have we gone from vote suppression to direct tampering, and the odds seem very high that this occurs in some places. Impact on national elections is harder to demonstrate. PS: And no I don't think there was a clear winner for this election, but IMO getting within spitting distance of a win is generally good enough. If 0.1% of voters change the outcome then the populace is just undecided.
- BEEdwards 10y agoHow is asking for a recount because number don't seem to match up anything other than skeptical?
- maxxxxx 10y agoBeing skeptical is generally good but I am afraid that the US is more and more eroding trust in their democracy. Most people think Congress is corrupt, a lot of people think that most elections since 2000 were rigged, or they think Obama is not even eligible to be president, now they think Trump is illegitimate because he didn't win the popular vote. I think this is a very dangerous path. When people have no faith in established institutions this creates a big opportunity for an authoritarian that "cleans up" the system.
- snewk 10y agoat the risk of opening a can of worms, why is obama ineligible for the presidency?
- csallen 10y agoI think he meant to say that people think Obama is ineligible (birther claims).
- maxxxxx 10y agoCorrect. I better change the post before I get down-voted.
- Retric 10y agoThe short answer was because people did not want him to win. The supposed issue was his nation of birth, thus the 'birther' term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_citizenship_conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_citizenship_consp...
- maxxxxx 10y agoPeople believe he is born outside the country, also that he is a Muslim and has an agenda to destroy America.
- JohnTHaller 10y agoI've spoken to people who seriously believe he's a secret Muslim born in Kenya. The fact that our president-elect spent years pushing this completely fabricated lie to further his own ends didn't help.
- hackuser 10y agoTrump was a minor player in that rumor; it was pushed by many in the GOP and in right-wing 'news' organizations.
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- elihu 10y ago> But he argues that since hacking is possible, it’s simply prudent to conduct a recount in close states where there’s a paper trail, which is reasonable enough. I think this is key. We should be skeptical of stolen election claims, but we should also be skeptical of claims that the election wasn't stolen. If recounting is straightforward to do and it addresses the very real concern that the count was tampered with, why not do it? Even if there was no tampering, it's very harmful to democracy to allow reasonable doubt to persist as to whether the vote counts were legitimate.
- ganoushoreilly 10y agoThe issue here is there isn't evidence to support the investigation into the allegations. Everyone can make the hacker bogey man a defense, but the truth is while hacking does happen, the way in which the voting systems are designed it's less likely to have been hacked through exploiting voting terminals. It's more likely that the registration of voters would be manipulated. I would argue that's why the Clinton campaign hasn't been aggressive with it, they haven't met the threshold of reasonable doubt. Off topic, I wish people and their passions had been put to work during the elections on both sides. It's all been yelling at each other over superiority and whatever else is the hot ticket button of the day. If people would take the energy and focus on a micro level, working within their communities to make change, we'd be a better country for it. - not directed at previous poster, just tagging on commentary.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago> Off topic, I wish people and their passions had been put to work during the elections on both sides. It's all been yelling at each other over superiority and whatever else is the hot ticket button of the day. If people would take the energy and focus on a micro level, working within their communities to make change, we'd be a better country for it. >- not directed at previous poster, just tagging on commentary. The problem is everyone "knew" HRC was going to win...
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- yk 10y agoAlex Halderman's blog post [1] (mentioned in the update of the vox piece) is a interesting read. He argues that a paper trail is an important independent check on election results, and that it should be checked as a matter of principle, instead of not using it at all. [1] https://medium.com/@jhalderm/want-to-know-if-the-election-was-hacked-look-at-the-ballots-c61a6113b0ba#.dk3myiksw https://medium.com/@jhalderm/want-to-know-if-the-election-wa...
- pnathan 10y agoI agree: the results should be audited in as many elections as possible, as a matter of course. I don't mean to be paranoid, but this should be a normative check on less than ethical actors.
- Theodores 10y agoThe act of physically counting ballots in community halls by people that care about participating in democracy is something lost with all electronic everything. The count used to bring people together in an event that you could watch or help out in. Many eyes ensured the count was good. Plus the hours would be late evening, so the count passed as a sociable event to some extent, certainly something would happen so not a dull evening. We should have a paper count for the community aspect even if the vote disappoints those concerned, e.g because it is between a spokesperson for the arms trade and a reality TV host.
- 6stringmerc 10y agoI'll give one of the study author's some credit for chiming in - following media wind up, mind you - regarding interpretation and pointing out that the deviation is completely reasonable when considering erroneous poll numbers being used for comparison. Which, I think, is a very worthwhile position to take because of, ahem, how generally off the polls were this time around. Those swing state numbers weren't even close to reflective of the majority of polls, IIRC, by Nov. 9.
- hackuser 10y agoDo you have any data on how well the polls did? According to FiveThirtyEight, national polls did pretty well, while state polls had more problems - but he doesn't say how many or how bad the problems were. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-difference-2-percentage-points-makes/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-difference-2-per... ... Theoretically, if a scientific survey says one thing and a reported vote count says another, how do you know which is wrong (or are both wrong)?
- hackuser 10y agoA prior article from a legitimate news source, New York Magazine, saying that the claim was raised as a possibility by leading experts in the field, was for some reason suppressed from HN's front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13018675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13018675 @sctb or @dang - I'm not suggesting some conspiracy, but perhaps an algorithm or process needs to be tweaked. In any case, I hope the other article can also be 'freed' to be seen by everyone. EDIT: Currently this comment has 1 point, is 13 minutes old, yet is somehow at the very bottom of the discussion. C'mon guys; that feels like an inconsiderate, combative response to a reasonable question. Why not just be open about it and make a comment?