So many down-ballot candidates outperforming Harris shows ... the fix was in

[Charging Triceratops]

Pass the word. This DOES NOT make sense in such a polarized election.
I don't know how Muskrat and Putin and the mega-MAGAt-billionaires did it, but they did.
And Felon-47, aka Fraud-47, knew it months ago.
We are not free.

[Fiendish Thingy]

1. Kooky nonsense

Pass the word.

[SCantiGOP]

3. Agree

This crap makes everyone in this site look crazy.

[elocs]

170. Never underestimate the ability of Democrats to be smug and complacent.

When somebody intends to pick your pocket and you know it, makes you feel like a chump when they succeed.

[bikes and bunnies]

21. Why is it kooky to suspect a criminal of committing crimes?

Trump was LITERALLY INDICTED for conspiracy to steal the 2020 election, and yet it's "kooky" to suspect him of doing the same thing again- successfully this time, with a little help from his friends?

You are smugly overestimating the "prior improbability" of a stolen election.

Considering 2000, Florida, 2004 Ohio, 2016, Operation Crosscheck (knocking millions off the voter rolls), 2020, Jan 6, 2024, voter suppression as documented by Greg Palast, the prior probability of a stolen or flipped election, i.e. the probability just based on background knowledge, without even looking at current claims or evidence, is much higher than what your pompous poo pooing would suggest.

[EdmondDantes_]

26. Except there's no evidence those elections were stolen

So they can't be used as evidence of a different election being stolen. And if they were capable of doing so, why did they not do so in 2008, 2012, and 2020? Why did they not give Trump bigger majorities in the House and Senate?

[lapfog_1]

51. that one is easy

they didn't have the source or binary code worked out in the 2020 election. They have the code now. There is plenty of evidence that voting and tabulating machines were turned over to GOP operatives last time Trump was in power.

It is a easy step from there to "cozy bear" hackers reverse engineering the code... and coming up with methods of hacking that will NOT leave a trace. Easy but time consuming.

No one will ever "prove" it happened. Other than disparity in polling and election results... and things like the OP points out.. split tickets and even "bullet tickets" ( which might be true or might not... I have never seen a verified authoritative count one way or the other... despite all the the assertions it is all baloney spread here ). If I was doing the hack... I would do it JUST ENOUGH to give Trump the win... by like 1.5% or maybe 2% and enough in the swing states to assure an electoral college win. I wouldn't do very many "bullet ballots" as they look suspect on the face of it. And I would do it in a way that cannot be traced by any means other than what we do not do... hand count paper ballots and hand tabulate those all the way to the state level... done 3 times by dedicated teams... one from Democrats, one from Republicans, and one from Independents.

And we make the entire country wait a week after the election to announce the vote. oh, and we crack down on voting challenges and vote suppression.

but never mind me... I'm just an old hacker. And expert computer scientist.

[questionseverything]

53. The thing we know for certain is, no people counted the votes, machines did

And machines do what the last programmer said to do

(Machines/computers)

[EdmondDantes_]

69. You do realize that the polls were highly accurate right?

If we're going with the polls were inaccurate, they were off by more in 2012 to pick a very nonrandom year. Doesn't mean Obama cheated to beat Romney.

Split ticket voting isn't some rare statistical anomaly. It happens all the time. The so-called bullet ballots theory failed on its face.

And your theory doesn't explain why they didn't give Trump bigger majorities if they had the ability.

[lapfog_1]

84. I do not have a theory

I am explaining that such a thing as vote cheating is entirely possible.

One part of doing it such that people don't ask for a new election is to not make the vote "outlandish". Read the articles on the Romanian election this last week. Their supreme court is going to decide in the next week if the results should be thrown out and a new election held because a far right candidate that no one even heard of "won" 20 percent of the vote ( more than any other candidate ) and will be in the runoff election against a center right candidate. His stated position is for Romania to leave NATO and leave the EU. And become a friend of Russia. Almost no one in Romania wants to do this. So now there is an investigation as to how the vote was conducted.

Of course in that voting system... if there was cheating, it would be harder to estimate how many votes to flip either at the voting machines or more likely the vote tabulating system. You never want the cheat to be obvious so people start investigating... but you have to end up in top two to make the runoff. This is difficult to estimate. In our election you just need enough to win. Your own Goebbels will take care to claim "mandate" and "landslide" even if the margin is like 1.5 percent. Or to put it another way... "I don't need your votes, I have all the votes I need"

But if everyone wants to believe that the majority of Americans that voted, voted for one of the most hated people IN America, who lost to Joe Biden bu 10M votes... because either a lot of people didn't care this time, or because they fondly remember the chaos, or because Kamala was a black woman, or because they hate trans people or immigrants or whatever... fine. I am just stating that vote cheating IS possible... and undetectable without hand counted and hand tabulated paper ballots. All the way, no machines. And allow that it might be a week or more to know how the vote went.

[Dem4life1234]

86. You're making too much sense

I honestly find it fucking disrespectful when posters tear others down for bringing up alleged election fraud. Then have the nerve to call us
Kooky.

I think it is something to discuss.

[Loupe Garoue]

94. I tried posting Stephen Spoonamore's Duty to Warn letter

Along with other Cybersecurity experts’ opinions that the statistics looked too perfect, as if they were produced instead of the more chaotic look that usually occurs. I am no statistician but that seems to make sense to me. Along with Dump’s propensity to cheat and steal, he was all but telling us what he was doing, “I don’t need the votes”, etc. I got a poor reception here for the most part.

I understand that people don’t want the Democrats to be seen as conspiracy theorists, but there are conspiracies! Dump and Musky, along with Russia are just arrogant enough to try. But before you prove it, you must investigate. Spoonamore made an initial theory about how it might have happened that with further information proved to be a wrong turn, which he acknowledged. Because of that, some have decided he is a crank. It doesn’t seem that way to me.

[tritsofme]

96. You are well aware the spoon guy is a proven liar. Why continue to spread his disinformation?

[Loupe Garoue]

97. Where was he proven to be a liar?

[tritsofme]

99. His bullet ballot "hypothesis" is a proven lie. It is mathematically impossible.

[Loupe Garoue]

100. That was an initial theory

Of what happened. Perhaps he should have waited to get a better handle on the data, but that doesn’t make him a liar. He admitted it was wrong. He is not the only expert who thinks the data doesn’t look right. Are you an expert in that field?

[tritsofme]

102. It wasn't a mistake, he is a con-artist. It's a shame people are that gullible.

I thought our folks were brighter than the red hats.

Spreading such ridiculous disinformation is in itself disqualifying.

[Loupe Garoue]

104. Except that many other experts in cybersecurity agree enough to write to Harris.

What does he have to gain?

[tritsofme]

106. Clicks. Internet fame. Maybe some rubes will give him money.

[ElementaryPenguin]

127. Now where's YOUR evidence?

"Maybe some rubes will give him money"

[tritsofme]

131. Given that spoon guy has already lied and made nakedly false claims, I think it is fair to question his motives.

[LiberalFighter]

121. Do you understand how elections are conducted?

There are 3,144 counties in the USA. And over 175,441 precincts. Each of those precincts has a different ballot from the rest. Not all precincts use Direct Record Electronic (DRE) voting machines. Many use paper ballots. Those would be more difficult to manipulate. Even voting machines would be.

[questionseverything]

126. Explain how manipulating paper ballots would be difficult if no one is allowed to actually count them

[Abnredleg]

130. Post election audits

In NC, for example, they conduct a Risk Limiting Audit which consists of hand counting sample ballots and comparing the results to the tabulator count.

[questionseverything]

133. If they don't hand count the entire county mistakes maybe hidden

Besides the public has a right to oversee their own elections, we should never have to depend on a small sample counted by insiders

[Abnredleg]

135. The audit is open to the public

And conducted by election officials and observers from all parties. I think a lot of people on this site don’t appreciate just how transparent the process is, with outside observers watching the entire process. After all, we’re talking about a process created by politicians who don’t trust each other. As to accuracy, a truly random sample will pick up issues, at which point you do a complete recount.

[questionseverything]

141. You and I will never agree, I believe in publicly countering at least the top two races

You believe in the machines, the people who program the machines and a small sampling of votes counted by insiders and a few hand picked individuals

[Hope22]

146. I believe in hand counting the paper receipts

And comparing them with the reported totals. If they know there will be zero audits they have no reason to not screw with the software. Let me ask you this. Do you look at your bank statements or do you know they will always be correct. If you don’t look don’t let your bank know😁🤣 and to be clear I hate blackbox voting! Always have.

[Abnredleg]

149. Most people vote with paper ballots

Particularly in the swing states. It’s very hard to hack a system with paper ballots, even if they are machine tabulated, because the audit processes are effective. There is no Deep State colluding to decide elections

[questionseverything]

150. Why are the insults necessary ?

[Abnredleg]

154. What insult?

I’m just pointing out that you’re pushing a CT. There is no cabal of selected people running the elections - it’s a very open process where ordinary people volunteer to participate and observe. Your comment implied they’re concealing fraud, which is not the case.

[LiberalFighter]

162. And some precincts will include a hand count.

Likely based on votes being close

[LiberalFighter]

161. There are no insiders involved in the counting as you suggest.

There aren't enough insiders that would make it happen.

Your responses indicate you have not done research or understand the process involved.

I have been involved in assigning election workers for the Democratic party in our county. Not one has attended monthly meetings for the Party. We assign nearly three hundred workers based on their voting history from primaries.

The county Republican Party assign their own people. And we know their names too.

At a minimum there are five election workers at each election site. Some sites may have more than one precinct assigned. There may be more than five election workers if more than one precinct is assigned to an election site. There could be up to six precincts at an election site.

[LiberalFighter]

160. Ballots are not counted by one person or political party

In my county and it is required by the state for all counties.

There is a test of machines before the election conducted and witnessed by both political parties.

Election workers consist of members of both political party. In our county the Election Inspector is a Republican. There is at a minimum an Election Judge and Clerk from both political party.
When results are taken to election hdqters to compile the results it is the Republican Inspector and Democratic Judge take the electronic data. Along with a printout. That would also have to match number of voters from the machine when voters sign in and the voting machine itself. The voting machine and sign in are two separate devices not connected to each other.

There are additional protocols involved from start to finish.

[LiberalFighter]

159. And they include members of both political parties

Side by side.

[LiberalFighter]

158. You think it isn't done.

And you don't know the process involved in collecting the data and who is all involved.

I would encourage you to contact the party chair to find out.

[Lunabell]

95. How can you get evidence without an investigation?

Detective work 101.

[Fiendish Thingy]

29. While you're distracted with evidence free CT's

Others are wisely conserving their energy and resources for the imminent challenges that lie ahead.

[Dem4life1234]

77. Thank you!

Someone who topped out at no higher than a 47% approval ratings, and that's being generous, all of a sudden wins almost half of the vote( 49.9%)? That's such bullshit.

No doubt there were some nefarious methods going on, he needed to win to keep his fat ass out of prison.

[karynnj]

90. The percents are from different populations

The approval rating is all adults, the vote is, of course, of those who voted. We have always had a disappointingly low percent of the population voting. Is it hard to believe that a higher percent of the non voters would have said disapprove than the voters? That likely might be true of Harris as well .... or indicative of the possibility that we did not do as well getting out our vote.

[Takket]

23. a whole lot of low post count accounts seem pretty intent on stirring up arguments over this nonsense.

[Fiendish Thingy]

30. Yup

Makes you wonder if there’s an ulterior motive, like distracting folks and inducing them to waste valuable energy and resources just as imminent challenges lie ahead.

[Charging Triceratops]

75. Yeah, because you know better, right?

Chase us without 22K posts away.

[Stuckinthebush]

63. Indeed

How did we get our own conspiracists. That’s MAGA territory

[The Revolution]

88. They've always been here

Remember the MIHOP/LIHOP stuff during the Bush years? It seems that most believe the JFK assassination was a conspiracy. Many also believe in some kind of UFO cover up conspiracy.

[Stuckinthebush]

93. True. I remember those days

MIHOP/ LIHOP. That brings back memories!

[delisen]

82. Check out Romanian elections/ Russia

[ElementaryPenguin]

125. No

[ColinC]

2. Yeah throwing out campaign finance laws would do that

And by "that" I mean allow billionaires to effectively manipulate and target millions of voters... not the kooky spooky vote switching nonsense.

[brush]

4. I think you're on to something. I still don't believe trump won all the swing states.

[jimfields33]

27. If the swing states had red governors, I'd agree.

But the swing states had democratic governors and AG except Georgia who doesn’t particularly like trump.

[questionseverything]

54. Do you think the governor is overseeing the voting machines or the reporting page?

[MichMan]

68. In Michigan, Dems control the Governor, Sec. of State, and AG offices

Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson is in charge of the entirety of the voting process.

[questionseverything]

73. And china hasn't hacked the NSA?

The world we live in is, last best hacker wins….

[brush]

85. Right, it doesn't compute. Something seems off.

[milestogo]

42. I still can't figure out how some people in Wisconsin voted for Tammy Baldwin and Donald Trump.

To me the explanations are far fetched.

All three are known candidates. Baldwin and Harris have similar values. I can see that maybe a handful of people might do this but -not tens of thousands. And it was more pronounced in some of the other swing states.

[onenote]

49. What evidence do you have that "tens of thousands" of Wisconsin voters voted for Baldwin and Trump?

As is typically the case, there were thousands more votes cast in the presidential election in Wisconsin than the Senate race -- over 32,000 in fact.
There were only 4000 more votes cast for Baldwin than for Harris. So it is far more likely that several thousand Baldwin voters sat out the presidential contest than they voted for Trump.

[Charging Triceratops]

76. I worked the polls. I know Dems, Repukes, Libertarians and Independents

Not ONE said they voted for Trump AND Casey in PA.
The Trumpers voted for McCormick. The Harris voters voted for Casey.
There is no logical explanation for the results. None.

[karynnj]

129. I could understand a Trump/Casey vote by a PA Catholic who

was swayed by the Trump lies on Harris etc al even allowing abortion after the baby is born. In Casey, they had a known prolife Senator, the son of a governor not getting a speaking role at Bill Clinton's convention because he was also prolife.

[brush]

83. Yes, voting for Balwin and Harris seems far more likely than Baldwin and trump, that does not compute to me.

[yellow dahlia]

144. Thank you

There are so many things like this, that don't add up.

[muriel_volestrangler]

168. In 2 elections, you have 4 candidates. You're ignoring that Baldwin beat a nobody

Eric Hovde. He is so unknown, he doesn't have a Wikipedia entry. Baldwin outspent him 2 to 1 - and nearly half of Hovde's funds came from himself. Baldwin beating him by a margin of 0.85% is not amazing.

But in the senatorial election, Hovde got 1,643,996, Thomas Leager ("America First", so I'm guessing far right) got 28,751, and Phil Anderson ("Disrupt the Corruption", a self-proclaimed "libertarian activist" ) got 42,315. So the non-Baldwin votes add up to 1,715,062. That's more than Trump got (1,697,626).

You don't even need a single Baldwin voter to choose Trump to get this result. Why do you call this "far fetched"? What makes you claim "tens of thousands" did vote Baldwin/Trump? But if there is a source for that, 20,000/1,670,000 = 1.2% of Baldwin's vote, or 0.6% of the total vote. Do you think it's impossible that 0.6% of voters thought "I'll vote for the candidates I've seen more about over the past decade"?

[milestogo]

169. Eric Hovde spent $100 million on this race.

He wasn't an unknown- he ran against Baldwin before. The ad market was absolutely flooded with ads bashing Baldwin.

You can have the win. I am not interested in fighting with you or anyone else about this. My Senator was re-elected.

[dsc]

5. Candidate choice matters

NC was one state where Trump won, and in fact improved his margin, while Democrats did better than 4 years ago. We won half of the Council of State races (Gov, Lt Gov, AG, Sec of State, and Superintendent of Public Instruction) and won a Supreme Court seat (by 640 votes). But there are good reasons we won those races, the GOP governor candidate was adamantly against abortion and well nuts, the Lt Gov candidate on our side had a golden name and lineage (daughter of 4 term governor), the AG candidate had a national brand, the Sec of State is a decades long incumbent with a strong brand, and the GOP superintendent candidate was a full blown nut (she called for both Obama and Biden to be publicly executed on pay per view). We lost the races where we didn't have a good incumbent or they have a terrible candidate.

[BComplex]

6. Totally agree. He told us over and over how he was going to do it...because he said that's what the democrats did to him

Republicans are totally transparent, because they project everything they're doing on the democrats.

[Kaleva]

7. We lost the Senate, didn't make any gain in governorships

The Repubs still control the House and they made gains at the State Legislature level

Where did you get your info from?

I think you'd be on to something if we had retained the Senate, gained control of the House and made gains at the state level

[Lunabell]

8. It's worth looking in to.

But, it won't happen. Nobody has the guts to even try.

And don't forget about the others that will call you a flake over believing "conspiracy theories." It's not a conspiracy theory. It's circumstantial evidence. And circumstantial evidence has put people in prison for life.

It is worth a legal and thorough investigation to get to the truth. Whatever that truth is.

[questionseverything]

55. Wisconsin is less than 30,000 votes difference

3200 precincts is less than 9 vote change per

[MichMan]

67. Look at what the results were in the 2016 Wisconsin recount for comparison

Green Party candidate Jill Stein requested a full recount in Wisconsin on Nov. 25, saying the election had been hacked. Prior to the recount, Donald Trump (R) led Hillary Clinton (D) by 27,257 votes. The recount began on Dec. 1 and finished on Dec. 12. As a result, Clinton gained 713 votes and Trump gained 844, adding 131 votes to his margin of victory.

Very similar margin now as there was back then. No recount will flip 30,000 votes

[questionseverything]

132. Wisconsin doesn't do hand counts even for recounts

They run the ballots through the same machine

From the kloppenberg, sc recount race, I know Wisconsin doesn’t look at the number of voters and compare them to the number of ballots. They brought unsealed bags of votes, 4 bags of votes when bags were clearly marked 1 of 5, 2 of 5 but skipped the 4 of 5 bag. Bradblog did an excellent job of documenting it all and you can still find the articles and pictures on his site.

[MichMan]

140. Surely, you have an example of a previous hand count in an entire state that flipped 30,000 votes then.

Pick any state

[questionseverything]

142. The sc stopped the count in Florida but when the ballots were looked at

Over a 100,000 over votes were found that showed clear intent that weren’t counted

But you don’t want public counts w/o clear evidence of cheating? How could any evidence be gathered w/o counting?

It’s Saturday night, last word is all yours

[MichMan]

156. Time's a wastin' with the deadline for certification coming up in a few weeks.

First, each of the 50 states will likely need to hire and train at least a million counters apiece (of each party) in order to get it done it time. Maybe twice that many to verify the work of the first million. First you have to hire and vet that many people and then train them. All that takes time we just don't have.

The states aren't going to start until they get the costs paid for up front. Since the Republican's aren't likely going to contribute, it will likely be up to the Democrats to step up, like always. I estimate it will take at least $1 billion.

[Think. Again.]

9. I tend to agree...

I have no idea how they pulled it off, but any 13 year old knows that digital devices are open to manipulation by their very nature, and if major banking institutions, hi-tech conglomerates, and government security agencies can be easily hacked, as they often are, certainly something as globally valuable as the American elections can be also.

[questionseverything]

56. The government just recently announced china has hacked into the nsa network

And has been in there since mid October

So yes everything is vulnerable

[Think. Again.]

60. Yep.

[Henry203]

10. More likely her color

Had more to do with it. Slotkin and Baldwin are good examples.

[PSPS]

11. Slow down, there, Sparky!

Instead if making up silly conspiracy theories, I've found that this is the most reasonable sequence of events.

First, Biden was a weak candidate in 2020 based on the primaries, but he benefited from being a known quantity. He won in the general largely because the country was tired of the four-year-long freak show.

Next, Biden chose Harris as his VP. This was certainly a worthwhile choice because it looked good and she was eminently qualified (the position of VP is largely ceremonial.)

Next, the media destroyed Biden and, instead of withdrawing, he dragged his feet. Remember, he as much as promised that he would not run for a second term in 2019. By dragging his feet, he made it impossible for any other candidate to mount an effective campaign because anyone besides Harris would have to start with no money to finance a campaign and there was only three months until the election.

Finally, Harris herself. Sure, she's qualified, but she's a woman. A black woman. Running for president. Good luck with that in this country. There was ballot splitting galore, so it wasn't due to her being a democrat. Democrats down ballot out-performed their republican opponents across the country.

I find this scenario much more plausible than more of the bamboo ballot type of nonsense.

[Beartracks]

16. I've wondered if Harris being a black woman might've led lots of inattentive voters to the conclusion...

... that she really was just supposed to be a "woke" choice of replacement. Apparently, "did Biden drop out" was actually trending on Google on Election Day, so this kind of knee-jerk ignorance wouldn't really be out of the question among the electorate.

=============

[electric_blue68]

28. When I saw that "did Biden drop out"... I was like...wtf?!

[Charging Triceratops]

78. And Oswald acted alone

Yep. That's the ticket!

[Blue Owl]

12. What harm could come out of recounting swing state ballots?

[hadEnuf]

14. No harm should come of it, but some feel it would make us look "silly".

Yet people who embrace sheer insanity like Jewish space lasers and child brothels in the basements of pizzerias that don't have basements win elections.

I don't think we should worry about "silly".

[Hope22]

122. Better to look irresponsible!!!!

We are to be good stewards of this nation. All of us. If some decide to turn their backs even that isn’t stupid. There’s another word for that. It was wrong not to request a recount. If Harris has been threatened then that needs to be addressed. I feel like we are rudderless floating down river with the falls in earshot!

[tritsofme]

124. Yikes! Is that the new conspiracy theory now? That Harris does not endorse these ridiculous fantasies only because

Harris, the incumbent vice president of the United States…is somehow being credibly threatened?

Now you’ve made her complicit in this “theft”

Layering conspiracy theories on top of conspiracy theories. Did chemtrails play a role?

That is some batshit crazy stuff.

[Hope22]

153. Seriously what is with the conspiracy crap.

It’s a thought. You may have them too! She is the only person who can ask for a recount. Make of it what you want. I am
fully aware that she is the Vice President of the United States. And yes …anyone can be threatened when a mobster runs for president….three times. I’m sure you are aware that House Dems received bomb threats signed Maga on Thanksgiving. See how that works? I’m not the one on another planet here. We are way out of the normal here.

[Hope22]

166. Say it once again......

I’m not repeating myself. You and your buddy keep it up. Must be exhausting!

[Meowmee]

19. None at all

It should be done automatically in all elections imo. Also do forensic investigation of tabulation etc. A portion of the funds raised for elections should be set aside to do the recount, etc.

[Abnredleg]

136. They already do extensive post election audits

[Meowmee]

138. Not what is needed imo and no forensic investigation of software

[Abnredleg]

157. Most people vote with paper

Which allows you to do audits in which you hand count and compare to tabulator counts. Plus, people are seriously overestimating how easy it is to hack electronic voting equipment which is not attached to the Internet. Yes, computers can be hacked via the Internet, which is why voting equipment is air gapped.

[MichMan]

20. No harm other than it costs tens of millions of dollars

Harris is behind 80,000 votes in Michigan and 120,000 in Pennsylvania. Most recounts at best only pick up a couple hundred votes.

As a point of reference on the 2016 recount in Wisconsin

Green Party candidate Jill Stein requested a full recount in Wisconsin on Nov. 25, saying the election had been hacked. Prior to the recount, Donald Trump (R) led Hillary Clinton (D) by 27,257 votes. The recount began on Dec. 1 and finished on Dec. 12. As a result, Clinton gained 713 votes and Trump gained 844, adding 131 votes to his margin of victory.

 
Who do you think is going to piss away money like that?

[Think. Again.]

35. You think saving our Democracy isn't worth "pissing away" some money???

[tritsofme]

98. No, donors should not be exploited to placate conspiracy theory mongers.

We shouldn’t waste tens of millions of donors hard earned dollars only because some people on the internet are having a hard time accepting reality.

[Think. Again.]

105. Verifying first-counts of extremely important and complex election results is not a waste of anything.

[tritsofme]

107. Then why has Harris not pursued this path? Why is Harris not seeking such recounts?

She could fire off an email and have it funded this afternoon.

[Think. Again.]

108. You would have to ask her.

[tritsofme]

109. Nope. I don't have to ask her once or even twice to know that she has no interest in these goofy conspiracy theories.

Her silence drowns out the nonsense people are trying to push.

If there was anything there, Harris would have pursued it.

It is well past time to accept reality and move on.

[Think. Again.]

112. That's quite an assumption to make about what a sitting VP and Presidential candidate is thinking about.

Thank you for your input.

[tritsofme]

114. No, it's actually not. As they say, actions speak louder than words.

There are no actions coming from Harris supporting the silly conspiracy theories. There are no words supporting them.

Sorry she isn’t playing along.

[Think. Again.]

118. You've read quite a bit into her silence.

[tritsofme]

120. lol, you're right, maybe she is just waiting for the right moment to pounce and embrace all the goofiness?

Yea, that’s the ticket!

[Peregrine Took]

128. Frankly, when I think of the 2 conniving jamokes involed here - I can't think of anything BUT skulduggery!

No way are those two, in any way shape or form, going to sit back and let the "people" have their say.

[questionseverything]

57. By federal law ballots and all election related materials must be kept for 22 months

Situations like this are the reason why

[bikes and bunnies]

22. I agree: Hand Recount!

When newspapers finally finished their recount of Florida's vote in 2000, guess who won?

Al Gore!

But the news was buried on page whatever of the NY Times, overshadowed by 9/11 coverage.

[electric_blue68]

32. Ohhh, mannnn. I REMEMBER that. I was Devastated....

and you're reading a post by an NYC'r who spent almost a year 9/80 - 8/81 in the NE Corner office of the 73rd flr of South Tower 2. Saw the collapsing cloud of debris of the last tower from Brooklyn, so I never got to where I was going in Manhattan. Spent weeks off on at the Union Sq memorial. So poignant!

Anyway, the news that he had won FL?! Arrrrrrrggggggggg!

[Clouds Passing]

43. And Al Gore actually WON after the count was finished!

[electric_blue68]

44. 😥

[Clouds Passing]

70. But let's move on, that was in the past, no need to revisit, it's over forget about it.....

[Kaleva]

46. What was the original difference in votes?

Was Gore behind by 80,000 to 120,000 votes in Florida like Harris is in Michigan and Pennsylvania?

[Wiz Imp]

65. partially true but not as simple as you make it out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_recount_in_Florida

Media recounts
From the beginning of the controversy, politicians, litigants and the press focused exclusively on the undervotes, in particular incompletely punched hanging chads. Undervotes (ballots that did not register any vote when counted by machine) were the subject of much media coverage, most of the lawsuits and the Florida Supreme Court ruling.[39] After the election, recounts conducted by various United States news media organizations continued to focus on undervotes. Based on the review of these ballots, their results indicated that Bush would have won if certain recounting methods had been used (including the one favored by Gore at the time of the Supreme Court decision), but that Gore might have won under other standards and scenarios.[84] The post-controversy recounts revealed that, "if a manual recount had been limited to undervotes, it would have produced an inaccurate picture of the electorate's position."[4]

USA Today, The Miami Herald, and Knight Ridder commissioned accounting firm BDO Seidman to count undervotes. BDO Seidman's results, reported in USA Today, show that under the strictest standard, where only a cleanly punched ballot with a fully removed chad was counted, Gore's margin was three votes.[85] Under the other standards used in the study, Bush's margin of victory increased as looser standards were used. The standards considered by BDO Seidman were:

Lenient standard. Any alteration in a chad, ranging from a dimple to a full punch, counts as a vote. By this standard, Bush margin: 1,665 votes.
Palm Beach standard. A dimple is counted as a vote if other races on the same ballot show dimples as well. By this standard, Bush margin: 884 votes.
Two-corner standard. A chad with two or more corners removed is counted as a vote. This is the most common standard in use. By this standard, Bush margin: 363 votes.
Strict standard. Only a fully removed chad counts as a vote. By this standard, Gore margin: 3 votes.
The study notes that because of the possibility of mistakes, it is difficult to conclude that Gore would have won under the strict standard or that a high degree of certainty obtained in the study's results. It also remarks that there were variations between examiners and that election officials often did not provide the same number of undervotes as were counted on Election Day. Furthermore, the study did not consider overvotes, ballots that registered more than one vote when counted by machine.


Broward County judge Robert Rosenberg examines a punch card
The study also found that undervotes originating in optical-scan counties differ from those from punch card counties in a particular characteristic. Undervotes from punch card counties give new votes to candidates in roughly the same proportion as the county's official vote. Furthermore, the number of undervotes correlates with how well the punch-card machines are maintained, and not with factors such as race or socioeconomic status. Undervotes from optical-scan counties, however, correlate with Democratic votes more than Republican votes, and in particular to counties that scanned ballots at a central location rather than at precinct locations. Optical-scan counties were the only places in the study where Gore gained more votes than Bush, 1,036 to 775.

Some media reports focused on undervotes (chad blocked hole, wrong ink or pencil used, partial oval mark not detected, humidity affected scanner, ballot feeder misalignment), while others also included overvotes (hole punched or oval filled plus a write-in name, other multi-marked ballots). A larger consortium of news organizations, including USA Today, The Miami Herald, Knight Ridder, The Tampa Tribune, and five other newspapers next conducted a full recount of all machine-rejected ballots, including both undervotes and overvotes. The organization analyzed 171,908 ballots (60,647 undervotes and 111,261 overvotes), 3102 less than the later NORC study. According to their results, Bush won under stricter standards and Gore won under looser standards.[86] A Gore win was impossible without a recount of overvotes, which he did not request; however, faxes between Judge Terry Lewis and the canvassing boards throughout the state indicated that Lewis, who oversaw the recount effort, intended to have overvotes counted.[83]

According to the study, 3146 (3%) of the 111,261 examined overvotes "contained clear and therefore legally valid votes not counted in any of the manual recounts during the dispute."[4] According to Anthony Salvado, a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine, who acted as a consultant on the media recount, most of the errors were caused by ballot design, ballot wording, and efforts by voters to choose both a president and a vice president. For example, 21,188 of the Florida overvotes, or nearly one-fifth of the total, originated from Duval County, where the presidential ballot was split across two pages and voters were instructed to "vote every page". Half of the overvotes in Duval County had one presidential candidate marked on each page, making their vote illegal under Florida law. Salvado says that this alone cost Gore the election.

Including overvotes in the above totals for undervotes gives different margins of victory:

Lenient standard. Gore margin: 332 votes.
Palm Beach standard. Gore margin: 242 votes.
Two-corner standard. Bush margin: 407 votes.
Strict standard. Bush margin: 152 votes.

[egduj]

25. No harm at all and easy to do.

If you have the money. I think the campaign is already $20 million in the hole. It'll take far more than that to initiate recounts in seven states.

[Think. Again.]

36. Cool, that seems like a good deal to save our Democracy!

Let's do it!

[egduj]

41. There's an idiom for that.

Begins with "throw" and ends with "bad."

[Think. Again.]

45. Yes, if we were 100% sure the first-count outcome was correct, but without double-checking, that's impossible.

[Kaleva]

47. How much have you donated so far for a recount?

If this is a matter of saving democracy, you have probably donated most of what you have.

If you think it's someone else's responsibility, then this isn't the least bit important to you.

[Think. Again.]

58. You're correct, I DO actually believe this is a shared responsibility.

[planetc]

13. Well, if the election was slightly stolen, then we don't have to wait for the ...

disappearance of democracy. It's already here. Or already gone. In fact, if 2000, 2004, and 2016 were also stolen, then we have been watching democracy disappear for some time, while believing everything the MSM tells us, and beating ourselves up for skewed election outcomes. We should really know, shouldn't we, whether it's possible to steal an election?

[Think. Again.]

38. Yes!

And there's only one way to find out, hand recount!!!

[planetc]

74. Amen. Of paper ballots.

[yellow dahlia]

151. Agreed!

We have indeed been watching Democracy disappear, bit by bit. And SCOTUS has been providing the assist for much of it.

[PortTack]

15. The shameful sexist racist ppl in this country brought us this...it really is that simple!

[electric_blue68]

33. While I'm not certain that there wasn't some skullduggery Racism AND Sexism most likely played the bigger parts

😑 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

[The Wizard]

17. What was the undervote in swing states?

[Think. Again.]

39. Don't know...

...usually sane people are suddenly afraid of being called bad names or spending money on recounts.

[Kaleva]

48. How much have you spent?

[Think. Again.]

59. Yes, I have donated to the Harris/Walz (and other Blue) campaigns.

And unless I'm mistaken, the Federal Election Commission (whose mission statement is "The FEC was created to promote confidence and participation in the democratic process" ) does actually get budgeted for the work they are expectd to do.

[MichMan]

61. According to the Harris campaign website, donations under $41,300 are all allocated to the DNC, not towards a recount.

"The first $41,300/$15,000 from a person/multicandidate committee (“PAC”) will be allocated to the DNC. The next $3,300/$5,000 from a person/PAC will be allocated to Harris for President’s Recount Account."

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/web-hvf-november-fight-fund-2024?refcode=hfp_menu&opt_id=oeu1731871423161r0.21046018446375925

Kudos for stepping up and donating such a large amount of money. Most of us aren't able to pull that much out of our savings and retirement accounts.

[Think. Again.]

66. Oh, don't thank me, I did not donate a very large amount and...

...I was not responsible for deciding which money goes where in Harris' campaign.

I see this discussion is becoming tense and I'll be stepping away now.

[onenote]

50. In Wisconsin, it was slightly less than 1 percent.

There were around 32,000 more votes cast in the Presidential race than in the Senate race in Wisconsin. That "undervote" count is keeping in line with what is fairly typical - a difference of between around 1 percent and 2 percent. For example, in both Michigan, a swing state, and Virginia, a non-swing state, the difference in the number of votes in the Presidential race and the Senate contest was around 1.5%. FWIW, in 2020, in both Michigan and Virginia, the difference between the votes cast in the presidential race and the senate race was 1.2 percent. In Arizona, the difference between the presidential vote count and the senate vote count also was around 1.2% in both 2024 and 2020.

[spike jones]

18. The voting and counting machines used in many states were made by the company ES&S

which I believe stands for Elections Stolen and Sold.

[Bonx]

24. We were robed!!!

[kimbutgar]

31. I agree the election was rigged with the help of the muskrat.

And I hope when him and the orange Hitler 2.0 become enemies and he spills the truth what he did as revenge.

[rubbersole]

34. "I don't need your votes. I have plenty of votes." - tsf

Nothing to see here. Just move on...

PS - thank you for the democracy. And Ft. Knox. - Vladimir Musk

[dutch777]

37. Down ballot candidates had a more intimate and frequently longer connection to voters than Kamala.

We Dems should look at how our House reps won in districts Kamala lost. They were felt to be on track with their constituents concerns and Kamala was an unknown and unproven on the issues those voters cared about. We win this back by winning the House with good Dem reps that have proven their value to voters at the grass roots not brilliant big picture ideas flown in from DC and the DNC. We have no choice anyway. We restart from near scratch and rebuild a better party that can win national elections on its own policy merits, not because the guy we run against is a criminal and loon. Most don't seem worried about the latter, somehow, scarily.

[Dem4life1234]

110. Don't even blame Kamala here

She did what she could. She had an excellent ground game and I honestly believe she had more votes than that rapist.

[dutch777]

163. I don't blame Kamala. Given a waaaayyy late start she kept it positive and acquitted herself well. Hind sight....

...for me says senior WH advisors, Dem power players and the DNC should have been pushing Biden to step aside a year or more before the election. Joe's a good guy, he just couldn't close the deal one more time and family and other enablers thought they could shine that on given he was running against pure evil and it didn't work.

[Groundhawg]

40. BS

[GoneOffShore]

52. Alrighty then...... But thanks for the Felon47 hashtag - I'll be using that

[MichMan]

62. Using the same logic, couldn't someone make the claim that it was actually the down ballot candidates that cheated? n/t

[Wiz Imp]

64. Don't start bringing logic into it. It will just confuse the conspiracy theorists.

[questionseverything]

137. I'm always in favor of citizens doing hand counts in an open, transparent manner

I do think it should be done on election night though because honestly by now the chain of custody is suspect

[MichMan]

145. Study done at Rice University showed hand counts were correct only 58% of the time

An Examination of the Auditability of Voter Verified
Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) Ballots
Stephen N. Goggin and Michael D. Byrne
Department of Psychology
Rice University, MS-25
Houston, TX 77005 USA
{goggin, byrne}@rice.edu


With heightened concerns over the security of electronic voting machines, 37 states now require some form of voter
verification mechanism that could then be used in a recount. This usually takes the form of a Voter-Verified Paper
Audit Trail (VVPAT). Unfortunately, little is known about the usability of VVPATs for recount purposes. The
current study examines the speed and accuracy of hand recounts of VVPATs. Participants counted completed VVPAT
ballots which were based on those actually in use in DREs today.

Two races from of a spool of 120 ballots were manually counted, which includes separating ballots from the spool and removing rejected ballots. This task was time-consuming and prone to high error rates, with only 57.5% of participants’ counts providing the correct election results. Furthermore, ballot rejection rate interacted with the closeness of the race being counted; high rejection rate
paired with a small margin of victory resulted in a particularly high error rate. This experiment raises serious
concerns about the viability of conducting manual recounts or audits using current VVPAT technology.

https://accurate-voting.rice.edu/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/evt07-goggin.pdf

[questionseverything]

147. Now you are talking about the toilet paper rolls added to the dres

You are dishonest in your assessment because you aren’t comparing apples to apples

Btw I’m not surprised at all that the dre’s numbers don’t match the paper roll on the side

[MichMan]

148. Why would anyone believe an academic study with scientific methodology over a wacky conspiracy theory, right ?

[muriel_volestrangler]

71. Stats for the "So many down-ballot candidates outperforming Harris", please

I can't see mentions of that claim in the news. I can see the current totals for House voting:

Popular vote Republican 74,065,605 Democratic 69,673,676
Percentage Republican 50.7% Democratic 47.7%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections

while the presidential vote was closer:
Popular vote Republican 76,917,038 Democratic 74,441,439
Percentage Republican 50.0% Democratic 48.4%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election

(it's possible those figures have changed since Wikipedia was last updated, but it's pretty good at getting updates - please post anything more up to date)

So when you say "so many down-ballot candidates outperforming Harris", what do you mean?

[themaguffin]

72. Stop. Fucking stop it. JFC, stop it with the red hat conspiracy theories.

Yes, it does make sense.

Shit like this happened in 2020 and in other elections. It fucking happens.

[Tribetime]

79. The only thing I question is what happened when they had the bomb threats

Only in the swing states and the polling places were evacuated

[yellow dahlia]

152. ...and I believe some of those polling places did not reopen.

[Charging Triceratops]

80. I'm starting to think the real trolls

are the ones laughing at even the possibility of chicanery.

[muriel_volestrangler]

101. Please explain your thread title about down ballot wins

As I pointed out in a reply you've ignored, VP Harris did better, in raw votes, against Trump than House Democrats did against House Republicans.

We need to know if your claim has a basis first, before discussing if there's a reason.

[dawg]

81. They "did it" by controlling the media and the narrative.

Even so, the American people had access to enough good information to allow them to make the right choice. The majority of them didn't care.

Here in Georgia, we brought out even more Kamala voters than we did Joe Biden voters four years ago. It wasn't enough. Low-information voters came out of the woodwork to vote for Trump because ... eggs, or some shit.

[ibegurpard]

87. How do you explain ticket splitting before?

Montana has nearly always voted Republican for president in my lifetime yet sent Tester to the Senate for 3 terms (and other Democrats as well.

[karynnj]

89. Nonsense

For months before the election, there were many repeated stories and polls that mentioned that our Senate candidates were all doing better than either Biden or Harris. This was true for both incumbents and non incumbents. Had it been just the incumbents, the argument would be they were known and well liked ... Including Tester, Brown and Casey who lost more narrowly in their state than Harris did. You can make a case that if this were a midterm, at least Casey and maybe all of them might have won.

In a recent article, David Ploffe spoke of how their internal polls never showed her ahead, even when public polls showed her ahead or tied in late August/early September. Obviously the same was true for Biden as well or the inside people would not have pushed him out. One thing I heard from someone involved with at least one Congressional race is that it is possible that the switch to Harris may have helped at least preserve their numbers, even as they still do not have the majority.

There will be a million postmortems. It may be that the long term unhappiness with the country at least as far back as 2016 may have for the third time doomed the incumbent party. Few have suggested that Biden staying in would have led to a win.

Pelosi was quoted as saying Biden should have indicated he would not run earlier. Given all the problems in the world and the domestic successes, which were big, but apparently not enough, he may have felt the country was best off if he were not a lame duck. I seriously doubt he would have stepped down at that point, making Harris president. Not to mention, that imagined time frame would have meant Harris would have been a new President when Oct 7th happened. Consider that where Obama put Biden as the overseer of his early bill for the recovery of the economy, Biden could have made Harris the overseer of the IRA and the infrastructure bill obviously aligning with Buttigieg.

Assuming, Biden stayed as President, each of us might create a scenario that we would say would have put us in a stronger position. Even Harris winning an open primary would have given her more time to define herself and removed the argument that the people did not vote for her. Others might fantasize over how their favorite alternative could have won. My personal favorite if I had to name one would have been Witmer. However, no one ever knows the path not taken.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

91. If the fix was in why did the exit polls largely mirror the actual results?

[RandomNumbers]

92. Are the down-ballot candidates mostly white and male?

If so, that is your answer.

I'm always open to reasonable audits, particularly where statistical anomalies show up. But if the difference can be accounted for by racism and misogyny, then sad to say, it is probably no anomaly, just our f*cked up reality.

[RandySF]

103. It shows some people did not want to vote for a Black woman.

[Dem4life1234]

111. I'm seeing the people don't want to vote for a black woman stuff on here

Did you forget Hillary, a whole blonde white woman, also lost?

It's about her being a woman. Some won't vote for a woman period!

They would vote for a black man before voting a woman of any race.

Oh, she's as much Asian too, her skin is damn near white, but people never mention that.

I still believe there was tampering going on.

[tritsofme]

113. Lots of Trumpers still think there was tampering in 2020, it doesn't make it true.

The biggest mark against her was being part of an incumbent administration that had barely had a 40% approval rating.

[Dem4life1234]

117. Trumpers lack logic

Sure Trumpers thought voting was tampered, but was Biden a conman unfit lying felon? Nope. It's logical that he won fair and square, Dems do not cheat.

Did you see some of the valid reasoning many think the vote was tampered in here ? I think it is fine to have this conversation, not sure why some are getting triggered about it. It does not make sense that a lying, raping treasonous debaucherous conman wins the election of the freest nation in the world when he was not even ahead of her in polls!! Why did he tell his dimwit followers they won't have to vote anymore? We won't be silenced. You don't like the discussion, cool, you can trash can the thread and go on about your merry business.

[tritsofme]

119. Except there has been no valid reasoning, it has been exclusively baseless conspiracy theories, exactly like Trumpers.

I don’t go to DU’s conspiracy theory forum and hassle anyone, but delusional nonsense on the main page here should always be challenged.

[MrWowWow]

115. Go Watch "The Great Hack"

On NetFlix et al

Facebook was Putin's handmaiden for this for both the 2016 and 2024 presidential elections.

"The Great Hack" Trailer:
.
.

.
Get off Facebook ASAP!!! Go join BlueSky. Be careful with your personal data there as well. Your personal data
ONLY belongs to you. Never forget that!

[Self Esteem]

116. lol this happened in 2020 with Trump.

Republicans nearly won the House in 2020 and did better across the board than Trump.

You guys are just recycling arguments used by Republicans four years ago (and yes, this was one).

[Hope22]

123. Why be afraid to recount?

This has been a tool for years? Are you aware of any stolen elections? If not, it’s a thing. People are old enough to have lived through it.

[Self Esteem]

143. Did you care about recounts in 2020?

I can't recall one Democrat supporting Trump's demands of a recount in 2020 and those states were closer than any of the states Harris lost.

[yellow dahlia]

134. I have been singing this same tune, over and over.

[CousinIT]

139. I remember him saying: "We don't need your votes. We have plenty of votes." N/t

[Hope22]

155. And we know he always means what he says.

He’s like a child that can’t keep a secret. Right now he acts like he’s an idiot but he is playing Canada, drawing Trudeau in, demanding Gaza situation is settled which Biden has already announced and on and on. In seven weeks he will be taking credit for this and so much more. He said he didn’t need votes and he meant it yet those who should be reacting to the message ignore it. Surreal!

[Kid Berwyn]

164. True the Vote (plus the checkbook of Elon Musk)

Hard to beat cheating when it looks so legal.

https://www.gregpalast.com/vigilantes-inc-the-movie/