Saying that we count the votes once, no recounts is contrary to our system. You have some strange ideas about how the system works, and they all seem to favor the Republican candidate.
As you have so repeatedly said, there are automatic recounts if the vote is below a certain threshold. Well that is find and dandy, if the count count is below that threshold, recount the votes. If someone just wants to do a recount because they feel there was cheating with no proof of cheating, then I have a problem with that. At that point it's only purpose is to attempt to undermine the system. I think that is Jill's purpose.
My statements are across the board regardless of who won. It's your bias that thinks the statements I've made only apply to one side of the isle.
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You've got a nice Catch-22 going there, Baldimo-one vote is enough unless you can prove there was rigging, but we musn't recount the votes so we can see if there was rigging. And the sad part is, to people like you that makes sense.
Well unless you want to start matching votes to people, you can't really have a true recount and verify the process. As I've noted, your only concern is for counting the votes, you are not concerned with making sure each vote is an actually valid vote. You can drop the act now because you don't care for the security of the vote, you just want to prove that someone handed the vote to Trump.
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"Go ahead, count the votes. Have fun, they won't show anything different". But you don't say that-why not?
It's all about the "if you have nothing to hide bit". I'll remember that for later, it will come back to bite you in the ass.
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My take is that the law provides, in most states, an automatic recount if the margin of victory is 1% or less, and a requested recount by a candidate or state voter if they are able to afford it. I see nothing wrong with this. That's the law, it is designed to try to get the person with the most actual votes credited with the win.
If that were the true intentions of this recount I would agree with you, but that isn't the point of this recount. It's only purpose to the undermine the system and cast doubt on Trumps win.
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I've got a question, Baldimo. What if somebody pulls off a con that wrongly gives a candidate who actually lost OVER a 1% win. Say, a 4% or 5% win. If people followed your personal commandment of "Thou shalt not recount the votes until you have already proven there was cheating before the recount begins, then how can we catch the cheater? Likely, we will not be able to. And as long the wrongfully elected leader is a Republican or conservative, you like that just fine, don't you?
We get to engage in what if's and what about's?
I can cancel the whole BS you are trying to put forth. Each person who votes has to have an ID. This will negate the whole scenario you are trying to put forth. One ID, one vote. Security against fraud and a faith in the election system.
So that leaves WI as the lone state to recount out of the 3. Tomorrow is the EC votes and all states will have certified their votes. What's next for the wacky left who thinks Hillary had the election stolen from her?
There are so many negatives about the republican party of today, I don't understand why my brother is a republican.
1. They suppress voting.
2. Many are racial bigots.
3. They work to take away social benefits for all Americans.
4. And they're supposed to be the party of small government, but they're the ones intruding more and more into private lives.
1 article from a website that has never posted an honest article in there lives, another one that is an opinion piece and the third from a progressive UK website.
What's the matter, can't find anything of substance so you post bias and opinion?
Careful, your bias is showing. It would seem that only those on the left of the isle feel this way. Since you can't prove this, it is simply an opinion and not fact.
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3. They work to take away social benefits for all Americans.
Which social benefits are you talking about? Between federal, State and local govts there are over 170+ social welfare programs, you don't think this maybe to many programs to spend taxpayer money on?
You do realize that some of the programs you are worried about being taken won't even have an effect on you. Most of the changes that would take place to say SS, would only effect people like myself who are at least 20 years away from collecting it, you who is already collecting SS would collect until you died with no changes to your program.
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4. And they're supposed to be the party of small government, but they're the ones intruding more and more into private lives.
This is the one place you might have a point. I don't know about intruding more and more, it seems a lot of laws have changed in the last few years that can't be changed back. Most of the social issues are no longer issues and have been settled. So you will have to be more specific on what is being intruded into more and more.
There is no such thing as voting without ID. Therefore, you are dishonest when you say that states do not have voter ID laws. Every state has them. For once, be honest, no matter what the right wing media instructs you to post on here. Every state presently has voter ID laws.
But, but, if Rush Limbaugh says it it must be true.
0 Replies
Blickers
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Mon 12 Dec, 2016 11:59 pm
@Baldimo,
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As you have so repeatedly said, there are automatic recounts if the vote is below a certain threshold. Well that is find and dandy, if the count count is below that threshold, recount the votes.
How very generous of you, giving your consent to states to recount when their state law requires a recount if the margin is 1% or below. But many of those states also say, in the same election laws, that if the margin of victory is greater than 1% a recount can take place if the requestor-who could be a candidate, or it could simply be a state voter-can raise the funds for one. Which is what Jill Stein did. Contrary to your belief, your consent is not necessary for this.
Jill Stein is not undermining the system, she was following the law and you are just doing what the right wing always does, make accusations that you expect reasonable people to refute. Seemingly it's never the Right's responsibility to prove anything, it's always the Left's responsibility to refute the Right's accusations. Jill paid for a recount because she wanted to make sure the votes were counted correctly, that is all. And she had the right to do that.
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Well unless you want to start matching votes to people, you can't really have a true recount and verify the process.
That's also nonsense. You can recount votes if the paper ballot is there-that's why the ballots are saved. I suppose if it was up to you, once the margin of victory exceeds 1%, you'd destroy the ballots. Nothing you have written here indicates you would object to that.
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"Go ahead, count the votes. Have fun, they won't show anything different". But you don't say that-why not?
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It's all about the "if you have nothing to hide bit". I'll remember that for later, it will come back to bite you in the ass.
You say that like the ballots the public cast are Trump's personal property. They aren't. They are the public record of a public vote. Laws that protect personal property from illegal searches don't apply in this instance, in fact I'm flabbergasted you thought this idiotic dodge has merit. How many times do I have to point that out?
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If that were the true intentions of this recount I would agree with you,
Jill Stein's intentions were to follow the law and get a fair recount of the votes in states that legally allowed it. You have no proof to the contrary, and once again you argue by accusation.
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I've got a question, Baldimo. What if somebody pulls off a con that wrongly gives a candidate who actually lost OVER a 1% win. Say, a 4% or 5% win. If people followed your personal commandment of "Thou shalt not recount the votes until you have already proven there was cheating before the recount begins", then how can we catch the cheater? Likely, we will not be able to.
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We get to engage in what if's and what about's?
Yes, that is what the law is designed to do. You would allow recounts only if the margin of victory is 1% or less, by your own admission, if someone fixes an election by electronic or political means that yields a margin of victory over 1%, he gets away with it. And you're fine with that.
This video is how ONE team of computer experts demonstrate that, without being hooked up to a network, a whole group of voting machines can be fixed.
Now, imagine if a foreign country like Russia, with all its resources, wanted to fix an election-they could come up with things even the Princeton profs couldn't. Yet you want to limit the chances of recounting, which would limit the chance for fixing the vote. Amazing.
Since we seem to be going round and round about the very same thing, we will have to agree to disagree. I have no problems with recounts no matter what kind of corner you try to paint me into, it just shows your desperation. I have a problem with the candidate who came in last place questioning the validity of the vote and doing everything she can to seem like she has a legit reason to question the election process. As an American citizen of course she has the right, no one has questioned that and that seems to be your only reason to support her. The rest of us really do question her motives beyond wanting to have a recount. It's the questioning of her motives that bothers you. Besides some desperate attempt to point to Russia as the reason or hacked voting/counting machines as the reason, you want to cast doubt on the election. You keep pointing to this video about the hacking but utterly fail to point out that this video was made in 2007. The machines and tech isn't even relevant to the current machines that were used in the election, because I can show you a video of how a cell phone has hacked 9 years ago, prove that your modern day cellphone has the same faults? That is your entire purpose with those old ass videos. It to further undermine the faith in the election system and you should be ashamed of yourself.
As I have noted many times, as long as the Dems win, the election process is working properly but when the GOP wins there was cheating involved. It's really starting to look pathetic. I'm not blocking you but I'm not responding to anything further on this subject from you.
You keep pointing to this video about the hacking but utterly fail to point out that this video was made in 2007. The machines and tech isn't even relevant to the current machines that were used in the election,
From the LA Times: Pennsylvania's aging voting machines could be 'nightmare scenario' in the event of a disputed election But Andrew Appel, a Princeton professor of computer science, said that given a screwdriver and seven minutes with an electronic machine, he could “install a vote-stealing program” that would be hard to detect and shift a percentage of the votes.
In states like Pennsylvania, these voting machines “are delivered to polling places several days before the election — to elementary schools, churches and firehouses,” he said. That creates the risk of tampering. “This is not just one glitch in one manufacturer’s machine. It’s the very nature of computers,” he told a House subcommittee last month. Source
And Pennsylvania was one of the three states that Jill paid for a recount. There was actually noting to recount-Pennsylvania's voting machines don't give a receipt verifying who the vote was for-and even if they did, how could anyone verify that every machine's receipt matched the message that was electronically recorded? They can't.
You have trouble with Jill Stein not being able to win by recount, but still being able to call for one. As far as I'm concerned, any state citizen should be able to call for a recount if they are willing to pay for it, so you have no complaint. And Jill Stein's effort makes it more apparent just how messed up America's voting system is. Jill pays for a recount in PA, but there is nothing to recount. Wisconsin agreed to performa recount, but 20% of the county chairmen said they would not bother with ballots, they will just read off the numbers off the scanners. That's not recounting. And Michigan said they would not recount more than half the precincts because the talley of people who came in to vote did not exactly match the talley of all the individual candidates. In most of those precincts, the difference was only one vote-but that vote prevented the recount in that precinct.
America took a wrong turn when we adopted voting machines back in the early 1900s. We should return to hand counted ballots. The more you mechanize or computerize the process, the easier it becomes for a few people to steal an election. With hand counted ballots, you would have to buy off a huge amount of hand counters to change the outcome, and you'll likely get caught doing it too. With machines or electronic systems, one knowledgeable person can throw the election off. If there is one thing we have found out in this computer age, it's that nothing is not hackable. So why have these machines count our votes?
Do you always ignore the rest of an article that doesn't agree with your paranoria?
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“It’s true they have a potential vulnerability. You can put a bug in the software and switch some votes. But you would be talking about one machine and a few hundred votes,” said Michael Shamos, professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “It’s not a systemic problem. These machines are not connected, and they are tested regularly. I have voted for years on these machines and do not have a security concern.”
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In Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh and more than 1,300 voting precincts, election officials do random tests of voting machines on election day to check for tampering or irregularities.
“We randomly select 20 machines and pull them out of service,” said Mark Wolosik, the county election director. “We have an independent lab test them. We have been doing this since 2008 and haven’t found any problems,” he said.
Election officials and most party leaders — Republicans and Democrats — reject Trump’s talk of the election being “stolen” or “rigged.”
In Pennsylvania, polling places have a judge and two inspectors — representing the two major parties — to watch over the voting. And each side can have three designated “poll watchers” monitor them. They may challenge a voter who does not live in the area or is not who he says he is.
Do you always ignore the main point of the story? You keep defending voting machines instead of hand counts. Mechanical voting machines had been shown to be hackable. Then the electronic voting machines came out. Some just record your vote electronically and give no paper receipt, such as the Pennsylvania machines, and some just scan paper ballots filled out by the voter and keep the paper ballots for recounting purposes.
If there is one thing that has been proven in the last 20 years, it is that no computer system can be guaranteed to be unhackable. The government has been hacked. Microsoft, who makes the software, has been hacked. Everybody's been hacked. Yahoo just found out that after apologizing two months ago for half a billion subscribers being hacked in 2014, they now have to apologize again because one billion subscribers were hacked in 2013. The same tired old excuses persist, such as "but these voting machines are not hackable much because they aren't connected to the internet". Meanwhile, the video I just posted showed how someone can fix several machines not connected to the internet in just a minute or two. And then I quoted a 2016 article written this year before the election about the Pennsylvania machines, which are not connected to the internet, can be fixed by a computer science professor in just a few minutes. Here it is:
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But Andrew Appel, a Princeton professor of computer science, said that given a screwdriver and seven minutes with an electronic machine, he could “install a vote-stealing program” that would be hard to detect and shift a percentage of the votes.
Pennsylvania's election officials say that sure, the machines can be hacked, but since they are not connected to the internet the hacking will require people in different places hacking the machines in order to get enough changed votes to make a difference-that one person could not do it alone. Well, so what? Know what the margin of victory was in PA? 0.73%. Only a relatively few machines have to be hacked to make that small difference or even more. Clearly that is not impossible to do. Just because a handful of government officials cannot think of some way to do it offhand, doesn't mean it can't be done. Now imagine what a well financed organization full of electronic and computer experts and staffed by people professionally skilled in sabotage can accomplish if they were set loose on Pennsylvania's comically vulnerable computer system. Pretty obvious they would solve it quickly and execute a fix if they wanted to.
Not only should the recounts Jill Stein asked for and paid for have been carried out, the time has come to stop the madness and revert back to hand recounts for elections. The less machinery or computer systems-connected or unconnected to the internet-are involved, the more difficult it would be to fix an election. With hand counting, you would have to bribe or corrupt tens of thousands of vote counters to fix a presidential election, and then ensure their silence after the election if they have a change of heart. Like they just got a bad diagnosis from the doctor and don't want to bring that secret to the grave, or they have a religious conversion and feel they must tell the truth, or any of a number of things. The country made a bad decision when they adopted the voting machine, it's time to go back to hand counting.
n Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh and more than 1,300 voting precincts, election officials do random tests of voting machines on election day to check for tampering or irregularities.
“We randomly select 20 machines and pull them out of service,” said Mark Wolosik, the county election director. “We have an independent lab test them. We have been doing this since 2008 and haven’t found any problems,” he said.
Election officials and most party leaders — Republicans and Democrats — reject Trump’s talk of the election being “stolen” or “rigged.”
In Pennsylvania, polling places have a judge and two inspectors — representing the two major parties — to watch over the voting. And each side can have three designated “poll watchers” monitor them. They may challenge a voter who does not live in the area or is not who he says he is.
Baldimo, youj are factually incorrect that a video made in 2007 is irreleevant, and also that the machines used in this election were state of the art. Remember you're talking municipal budgets here, and municipal budgets rarely extend to stae-of-the-art equipment. And state of the art changes every eighteen months, but the equipment may be used for twenty years until it totally wears out and you can't get spare parts anymore. 2007 would ac tually be an upgrade for a lot of the equipment actually used in the country. MA still uses machines programmed each election on floppy discs, and gets the results on floppies. They might have been state of the art sometime in the 90s, And that's not unckommon.
You might want to reread what I actually wrote. I never said state of the art, I guessed they were more modern than the machines that were used in the video and I'm sure some of them are and some of them aren't.
