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Evidence shows hackers changed votes in the 2016 election but no one will admit it
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- Title
- On Conspiracy Theories and Election Hacking [Updated]
- Authors
- Michael Harriot
- Published
- Aug 1 2018
- Word count
- 1874 words
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Framing it this way helped me contextualize the facts we know. It seems ludicrous to assert that Russian operatives did nothing with the access they had to certain state voting systems even if there's no direct evidence yet to support the claim. Especially since we have confirmation of all the other nefarious ways in which they interfered (e.g. social media advertising/astroturfing). A burglar with the keys to your house who has spent weeks casing the place to figure out when you'll be gone doesn't just drive away when the opportunity to break in presents itself.
All this noise about hacking and absolutely no movement whatsoever from either side to go towards paper ballots again - that is the only way to be sure votes are not tampered with.
But as you see in Broward county the powers that be don't like a paper trail. I'd normally say they gave the county clerk a slap on the wrist for breaking state and federal law, but they have yet to do anything to her other than the Republican governor effectively saying he'll "keep and eye on her".
The exit polls show Trump won the election.
This article is disingenuous at best. It suggests Georgia, California, Illinois, Texas, Virginia & Mississippi were hacked? They didn't even flip from 2012.
Florida & Pensylvania flipped, but the exit polls show Trump winning both those by 49% to Hillary's 47-48%.
Lets focus on the real issues
Russia should be punished for trying to and almost certainly succeeding in influencing the US election.
The election system has way too many security holes that need fixing.
The election map is Gerrymandered to hell and the popular vote no longer wins.
Money is flowing in from who knows hell where, when money should have no influence in any election.
Most importantly, only 60% of eligible Americans voted. Americans have one of the lowest voter turnouts in the world. This last point means politicians are trying to motivate an increasingly partisan base.
You are referring to the initial intent of the 1777 Articles of Confederation versus the national constitutional convention at Philadelphia in 1787?
This is a huge blindspot in our politics, IMO because there's no constitutional remedy. The only 'right' action is a probably-violent overthrow of the presidency, but then what comes next?
The door for all this was opened in 2000 and again in 2004, when Bush stole the presidential election. They did things in Ohio in 2004 very similar to what happened in Georgia in 2016. Nobody was ever punished or even faced political blowback, so why not do it again?
E: Here's my pet conspiracy theory on Russian hacking. If you followed the Dem primaries, there were major issues with voters having been thrown off the rolls. Over 200,000 in NYC for example. Many believe - though it's impossible to prove - that this helped tip the elections in Clinton's favor. Given her poll numbers were never very far from Trump's while Sanders was always clearly ahead, and Russia's preference for Trump, it seems logical they'd set him up to face an opponent that he could realistically beat. Knowing what we know now, out seems at least within the real of possibility that Russian hackers interfered on Clinton's behalf in the primaries.
I was recently arguing about this, so I read up on the subject a bit. What struck me the most was that in all the analyses, intelligence memos, and studies, no one would admit to vote manipulation. They admitted exploits, breaches, talked at length about the DNC hack, but the denial of compromised votes were across the board.
This isn't about trying to go back and change history or have a redo. This is about securing the fundamentals of our democracy. The whole "hanging chad" ordeal back in 2000 turned loose the floodgates on the adoption of electronic voting machines without any concern of security or accountability. To be honest, I would actually be surprised if 2016 was the first instance of electronic voting manipulation.
That's understandable, and the only intelligence memos I had were for public consumption. Classified versions could be very different. That doesn't account for the public's acceptance of the "no vote tampering" story.
But regardless, my point is more about moving forward, not looking past. The state would not need to admit fault in order to better the security and accountability of the voting process. They would be able to deny wrongdoing or negligence, and simply say, "this is a better system with redundancy and accountability that's superior to the current system." No examples to be made, no heads to roll, just a better system.
Back to the OP, what astonishes me is that people are so adamantly opposed to acknowledging how much of the history of American politics is a history of election fraud - ballot box stuffing, ballot theft, false tallies, not to mention voter intimidation and exclusion. Robert Caro's Lyndon Johnson biography, Means of Ascent, has an amazing photo of soon-to-be Senator Johnson holding a "missing" ballot box. It's not all ancient history, either, as the article mentions.
I don't know if it's amnesia, propaganda, or just a blind faith in the power of American institutions that keeps us repeating the same errors, but in 2016, Russian vote hacking would just have been the icing on the excrement cake. Low voter turnout is one of the signs of how little belief people have that their votes will be counted and that voting matters in any consequential way.
I personally won’t visit that site because of how racist it is. If anyone wants to put up an archive link so I can read the article that would be much appreciated. I genuinely feel bad that reddit and tildes are driving traffic to this site today.
It turns out the person you're replying to is concerned about racism directed at white people in criticizing this site. I wonder what their other political views are like.
What is the problem with disliking racism regardless of the target?
Nothing, but those who actively protest a website because it hurts the feelings of white people almost always fall into a very predictable subsection of the population. Let's not kid ourselves.
I'm not going to assume anyone's intentions. Disliking racist articles against white people is not a negative. If you can change the race from white to any other and the article is racist, then the article was racist in the first place.
Before you assume, I generally vote Democrat and am firmly, but barely left of center in my beliefs.
I never said it was a negative. I merely suggested that a correlation exists.
Racism is racism no matter who it’s directed at. You can be racist against any race.
I’ve only visited a few times, none of them within the past year. It was the kind of racist where if you replaced the word white or white people with basically any other race or ethnicity than people would be pissed but they somehow get away with it. Articles with titles similar to (these are not exact titles) “should white people be allowed to do X?” Or “how white people ruined X”
I’m very free speech minded so I dont have issue with them saying it, but I don’t wanna bring them revenue by clicking through to the article
In my opinion, the reason it is different (and the reason you can't have racism against white people) is power. Historically, white people have had all the power in this country (and many others). It's like a punching down vs. punching up thing.
If a child says to his mother "I hate you! I'm going to leave and never come back." it will probably make the mother sad. But it doesn't carry a lot of weight because the child doesn't have much power in the situation, however, the older the child gets, the more power they have. But if the mother were to say to the child "I hate you! I'm going to leave and never come back." that would be traumatizing and could have lifelong impact.
I don't mean to insinuate anything about minorities being like children, I'm just trying to pick a power dynamic out of the air.
Historically, many minorities have been systemically oppressed (or enslaved or jailed) by whites. So it has much more deep hurt when a white person says to a black person "should your people be allowed to do this?" In fact, I consider it one of my (many) personal privileges that I don't feel offended when someone makes fun of my race. I don't feel a deep fear when a black person says "should white people be wearing their hair this way?" Black people have been fired, expelled, teased, and murdered for wearing their hair the way it naturally grows out of their head or in a typically ethnic style, so it makes complete sense that it's much worse to say "should black people be allowed to wear their hair this way?"
I'm not at all commenting on your refusal to visit the website. You do you. Just responding to your points within your comment with my thoughts.
Source? J curious. I actually didn't hear of this site until today.
It's interesting... there's some discussion of it here.
The thing is, if you read the articles the top quora post uses as examples, they come off much differently (at least to my eyes). For example:
and the quora "summary"
This is a mischaracterization of the article:
because, a) at no point does the author ever discuss using power to enforce these types of racism, and b) I think it's real hard to read that first quoted paragraph and not be clued in to some extent that the author is using humor to make their point.
Similarly, for:
The "summary":
About as close as the author gets to anything the "summary" says is:
I really don't see anything in there that talks about violence in general, the author is specifically writing gun ownership, police violence and the perception of PoC as a "threat". Even the quora reviewer's appeal to statistics is somewhat misplaced, as white people are mostly likely to own guns and serve as police.
I suppose we could keep digging, but who has the time? The headlines and content are definitely (potentially) inflammatory, but is that so strange in the age of click-bait headlines? Is it racist?
I mean I would have to search through their site to provide a source which I don’t wanna do but I think you’ll get the jist if you look at some of their articles, or at least the titles. Again, I haven’t visited their site in a while so maybe it’s changed, who knows
Here you go
please stop
I hate it too, but I'd rather copy the title verbatim and leave the editorializing to someone else. Still felt like there was some commentary/context worth sharing here despite the title.
I'm not sure if you can change tags, but you should add opinion as one of the tags. This doesn't present any actual news, just points to old stuff and complains that no charges have been brought forth yet.
Good idea. Just added that in.