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That's assuming polling and research don't exist. That's also assuming that votes can't be flipped as results come in. It's also assuming that a voting machine

That's assuming polling and research don't exist. That's also assuming that votes can't be flipped as results come in. It's also assuming that a voting machine must flip votes if it's hacked. If the conspiracy is true, the more likely result is these machines can be programmed to only flip a small number of votes, just enough to change the outcome, and only if they need to. Most of the votes will be counted as they were cast, only just enough would need to be flipped. I think we can all imagine that computers can be programmed to perform this logic fairly trivially.

Karunamon 8y ago
The results of the 2016 election tell me that polling can be hilariously inaccurate and cannot account for things like the shy tory effect[1]. Everything else you're saying is spot on, though. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shy_Tory_Factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shy_Tory_Factor
- learc83 8y ago
  The 2016 polling wasn't close to hilariously inaccurate. The average of the 13 final national polls had Clinton ahead by ~3 points, Clinton won the national vote by ~2. Some individual state polls were more wrong, but they were conducted less frequently and so many of them didn't fully factor in the latest news cycle developments.
  - Karunamon 8y ago
    If those polls were measuring just raw voter preference rather than controlling for state (since the electoral college is what elects the President), we can add "intentionally dishonest" to the list of problems. "Who will win the popular vote" can be a datapoint since more often than not they line up, but it is absolutely less important overall. Even if we exclude mendacity and downgrade that to mere irresponsibility, terms like "98% chance of Hillary winning" were being thrown around left and right on election day. That speaks to something very, very wrong in how that data was being collected.
    - learc83 8y ago
      >That speaks to something very, very wrong in how that data was being collected The problem was mostly with how it was analyzed, not how it was collected. Some publications were making bad assumptions that state by state polling errors would end up being independent. 538, who didn't make that assumption, gave trump close to 1/3 chance of winning. Trump won by less than 80k votes in 3 states. Even the state polls weren't that far off--unlikely events happen.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > The results of the 2016 election tell me that polling can be hilariously inaccurate The polling was fairly accurate; given the nature of the electoral college and the fact that state-by-state deviations from polling results tend to be correlated rather than independent, and how close many of the state contests were, the winner was different than the expected winner (and this was very surprising to people who followed predictors who based their odds on the assumption that state variation was independent, less so those who followed those like 538 that pointed out that that was a mistake), but the polling was not particularly inaccurate.
burkaman 8y ago
I'm not talking about a theoretical world where the whole country could be hacked, monitored, and adjusted as results come in. Every state has a different system, and very few states have the worst case of digital machines with no paper trail: https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_stat... We can all imagine that computers can be hacked the way you describe, but such computers don't exist everywhere a hacker would need them. Take Michigan as an example, since it was key to Trump's victory and only a handful of counties swayed the results. The entire state uses paper ballots. How can this system be hacked without a massive social engineering conspiracy involving hundreds of people?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- freehunter 8y ago
  >without a massive social engineering conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...
  - everdev 8y ago
    Digital misinformation is totally different than forging paper ballots at scale.
  - burkaman 8y ago
    Social engineering meaning hundreds of election officials committing felonies and never talking about it for the rest of their lives. Cambridge Analytica is not a relevant comparison.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]

Karunamon 8y ago

The results of the 2016 election tell me that polling can be hilariously inaccurate and cannot account for things like the shy tory effect[1]. Everything else you're saying is spot on, though. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shy_Tory_Factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shy_Tory_Factor

learc83 8y ago
The 2016 polling wasn't close to hilariously inaccurate. The average of the 13 final national polls had Clinton ahead by ~3 points, Clinton won the national vote by ~2. Some individual state polls were more wrong, but they were conducted less frequently and so many of them didn't fully factor in the latest news cycle developments.
- Karunamon 8y ago
  If those polls were measuring just raw voter preference rather than controlling for state (since the electoral college is what elects the President), we can add "intentionally dishonest" to the list of problems. "Who will win the popular vote" can be a datapoint since more often than not they line up, but it is absolutely less important overall. Even if we exclude mendacity and downgrade that to mere irresponsibility, terms like "98% chance of Hillary winning" were being thrown around left and right on election day. That speaks to something very, very wrong in how that data was being collected.
  - learc83 8y ago
    >That speaks to something very, very wrong in how that data was being collected The problem was mostly with how it was analyzed, not how it was collected. Some publications were making bad assumptions that state by state polling errors would end up being independent. 538, who didn't make that assumption, gave trump close to 1/3 chance of winning. Trump won by less than 80k votes in 3 states. Even the state polls weren't that far off--unlikely events happen.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> The results of the 2016 election tell me that polling can be hilariously inaccurate The polling was fairly accurate; given the nature of the electoral college and the fact that state-by-state deviations from polling results tend to be correlated rather than independent, and how close many of the state contests were, the winner was different than the expected winner (and this was very surprising to people who followed predictors who based their odds on the assumption that state variation was independent, less so those who followed those like 538 that pointed out that that was a mistake), but the polling was not particularly inaccurate.

burkaman 8y ago

I'm not talking about a theoretical world where the whole country could be hacked, monitored, and adjusted as results come in. Every state has a different system, and very few states have the worst case of digital machines with no paper trail: https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_stat... We can all imagine that computers can be hacked the way you describe, but such computers don't exist everywhere a hacker would need them. Take Michigan as an example, since it was key to Trump's victory and only a handful of counties swayed the results. The entire state uses paper ballots. How can this system be hacked without a massive social engineering conspiracy involving hundreds of people?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
freehunter 8y ago
>without a massive social engineering conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...
- everdev 8y ago
  Digital misinformation is totally different than forging paper ballots at scale.
- burkaman 8y ago
  Social engineering meaning hundreds of election officials committing felonies and never talking about it for the rest of their lives. Cambridge Analytica is not a relevant comparison.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]