What to investigate?

Here is where I am today on evidence of Russian involvement in our elections; what is a valuable use of time; and what is less so.

- There is a lot of evidence that Donald Trump has been doing business with individuals associated with the Russian mob and money laundering.
"...for more than three decades the FBI has had Trump Tower in its sights. Many of its occupants have been targets of major investigations ... One thing many of them have in common is deep ties to organized crime — including the Russian mafia."

- The Clintons seem to have compromised themselves by donations from Russia and various business associates surrounding a uranium deal with Russia.

Why many progressives are more interested in the Clintons' ties to Russia than Trump's ties I don't understand.

Louise Mensch apparently says that Russia is connected to everything. So eventually, with any luck, she may be right about something. Could be Trump.

All of this for me, is a distraction from the real issue, which is how are we going to establish accurate, secure election protocols by the 2018 mid-term elections. Anyone can hack our elections right now: The Russians, Iran, China, Karl Rove, The DNC. Alex Halderman has said straight up that he could do it, probably most of his grad students and the girls from black girls code could as well. It is infinitely more fascinating to speculate on who may have been doing it than to do the nitty-gritty, tedious work of how to prevent it. Yet, that is where we need to put our attention. We have an incredibly narrow window in which to do this work before it will simply be too late to make changes to voting sytems prior to the election. Already Chicago and Maricopa County AZ are in the process of making these decisions.

There are a number of really important areas that need to be researched. If people are interested in assisting with this research - it would be really useful!

1) We need an excel sheet of the laws pertaining to how ballots are counted in each state.  Many states have outlawed hand-counting and we need to know which ones, and what the specific regulations are in each state. Someone could start this in a google spread sheet, and others could add in information. 

2) We need to research about 7 different emerging voting technologies that are coming on the market. I support hand-counted paper ballots in as many places as possible. Probably that will be in jurisdictions with on average 50,000 votes or less — and not too many referendums on the ballot. Other locales are going to need some kind of mechanism, and it would be good to compare emerging technologies and see which ones offer the most transparency and ability to verify the vote. 

Someone could start a google spread sheet and begin listing the parameters that can be compared for each system. This would be tremendously helpful! We can crowd-source this research and get it done more quickly and more thoroughly than anyone could do it on their own. If we can get a spreadsheet in place with basic information and websites of each option — we can take this to a team of computer scientists and ask for more in-depth vetting of the systems. 

If you start a spread sheet, please lmk via my website or DM and I will send you an email to add me. Here are the systems that I am aware of currently. 

o   Clear Ballot – Mark Earley &  Ion Sancho may be a source of information on this company

o   Clear Ballot has partnered with Voatz – (supporting internet voting- quite risky)

o   Galois

o   Jim Keller’s system (photographer/inventor from San Antonio Texas)

o   STAR – Travis County election officials & Rice Univ

o   Mitch Trachtenberg / Humboldt County system

o   TOBI – The open ballot initiative - Ray Lutz, Citizens’ Oversight Projects

o   Trust the Vote – Open Source – but available for commercial development

o   Some jurisdictions may be developing their own systems- LA & San Francisco are

o   A simple off the shelf system that would scan or photograph ballots that could then be counted via spreadsheets, in a system developed by the Michigan Election Reform Alliance, or a slide show method that has been developed by the Wisconsin Election Integrity Action Team, or another protocol.

Thoughts? Willing to help? Please let me know!!

 

How Far Off Are the Election Results…? It Could be a Lot.

We are starting to release our estimates of the differences between the expected statistical patterns and the reported totals in the 2016 presidential primaries. These are the percentages that our research indicates the official results could be off by.

In our report, An Electoral System in Crisis, released with the support of Election Justice USA, we provide considerable evidence that the vote totals from the 2016 primaries are in all likelihood not correct, and that the most likely explanation for a pattern to have this widespread of a presence is some kind of manipulation of the totals.

Fritz Scheuren, a member of the statistics faculty at George Washington University, and a former president of the American Statistical Association agreed. Dr. Scheuren has been a collaborator in our research, and is quoted in the report. Examining the data from the study, Scheuren said, “As a statistician, I find the results of the 2016 primary voting unusual. In fact, I found the patterns unexpected [and possibly even] suspicious. There is a greater degree of smoothness in the outcomes than the roughness that is typical in raw/real data.”

We got some email questions asking what the [ ] indicated had been changed from the original quote, so here is the quote exactly as Dr. Scheuren emailed it to me.

"In fact, I found the patterns unexpected. Suspicious even?"

I am in regular contact with Dr. Scheuren who has vetted much of our data. In one of our recent phone calls, he confirmed that the analysis strongly suggests that the results are not accurate, and weighed in on how close this election might have been if the votes had been reported accurately.  He said, “It would have been a lot closer and Sanders might have won.”

In Louisiana, the data indicates the results could be off by as much as 36%.

In the graph above, we see not only an unexpected dip in Sanders percentages in the large precincts, but also an implausible dip in the percentage of all the less-established democratic candidates on the ballot. We received screen shots (below) from one of the less-established candidates Roque De La Fuente that corroborate the idea that those candidates are having their vote totals depressed, deleted, or transferred in some way. In Travis County Texas, with almost 10% of the votes reported, De La Fuente had over 8000 votes. But by the time 50% of the votes were reported his total had been reduced to 105 votes.

De La Fuente ends the race in that county with 138 votes. The race in Texas above is a tight race. Sanders wound up winning Travis county 51% - 48%. But the candidates were fighting for every vote here. So votes that may have been available from less-established candidates could have been useful.

In Illinois we see a change in the percentages in the large precincts, so great that the winner of the race would be reversed if the percentages from the small precincts were maintained in the large precincts. This suspicious increase of Clinton's, and other candidates' percentages in the large precincts, is the thrust of our research. We were unable to find a plausible demographic explanation for its presence in state after state. The analysis indicates that the results could be off by as much as 9% and that in this state, it would be large enough to change the outcome.

There are many other states that had suspect patterns this large or larger. We will be releasing more graphs soon.

Dr. Scheuren and I discussed what actions need to be taken in regard to this data. He suggested, "At least two states where these issues are evident should be manually counted – if there’s a meaningful difference between the official count and the recount, then maybe more states should be counted," and he emphasized again, "because it could change the outcome.”

As Hillary Clinton said tonight, "Our democracy isn't working the way it should."

NEVADA DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS - 2 SIDES

CNN spent a lot of time last night on what they described as the crude, disrespectful and incendiary behavior of Sanders supporters at the Nevada caucus.

"'I was not able to stop these people for doing what they did,' Boxer, a Hillary Clinton supporter, told CNN. "Apparently they've done it before. .... This group of about 100 were very vocal, and I can't describe it -- disrespectful doesn't even explain it, it was worse than that."

Boxer is hardly the lone Clinton supporter to experience such harassment on the campaign trail. Several top Democrats told CNN publicly and privately that the energy and enthusiasm of Sanders supporters has at times descended into incendiary attacks that threaten to tear apart efforts to unite Democrats against Donald Trump. Several female senators told CNN the attacks have been misogynistic."

Behind the Scenes in Nevada

However if you read Tom Cahill's post from April 3rd, you'll get a very different impression of what was going on. He describes behind the scenes maneuvering to leave Sanders representatives out of the loop, and attempts to remove credential committee chair Christine Kramar behind her back for providing Sanders team with equal information. This led to a standoff where Kramer sat down on the floor in protest. The video has 85k hits on YouTube. At the bottom of the post, you see the entire floor erupt in cheers when Sanders wins.

Reminds me of the John F. Kennedy's quote, also used in a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”