NP - Reductio ad absurdum on FB

[John Bailey]

I'd dismiss the idea of such widespread electoral fraud in a country
like the US if I hadn't heard this freaking terrifying account of
electronic voting a few years ago via This American Life. Definitely
worth a listen (or just skim the transcript):
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/250/transcript
- it's one of those rare bits of journalism that powerfully altered my
thinking on a subject.

Short points:
1) electronic voting machines are so easy to hack that the reporter
does it himself in the first few minutes of the show
2) unlike analog machines, there's no physical evidence of how you
voted, so if anything is changed there's no log (or chad) of it
3) even if it's not human malice, mistakes also can't be traced for
the same reason
4) the workers staffing the polling booths aren't computer engineers,
so the people who operate these machines no longer know how they work
5) and the machines themselves are under the same trade secrecy laws
as Coca Cola's secret recipe - if you did know how they work and you
don't work for the company, you're in trouble...

And so on. Fascinating stuff.

On Wed, Nov 16, 2016 at 2:56 PM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com> wrote:
> Every one since 2000 I mean - which saw the beginning of wide-spread
> use of paper-free top secret proprietary "private" software-using,
> Republican owned and operated touch-screen electronic voting machines.
>
> J.
>
> On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 10:54 PM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Thing is? She fucking won.
>>
>> Popular vote, electoral vote, she won them all.
>>
>> The PROBLEM is that the paperless voting machines didn't reflect that fact.
>>
>> Evidence of a stolen election
>> http://www.gregpalast.com/election-stolen-heres/
>>
>> Yet more evidence of a stolen election
>> http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/can-we-count-election-results-exit-poll-discrepancies-and-voter-suppression-are
>>
>> And yet even more evidence of a stolen election
>> https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/
>>
>> That last one is particularly good if you dig into the materials about
>> 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2010 and 2014 (all stolen) as well as 2008 and
>> 2012 (attempted steals).
>>
>> Exit polling raw data is the gold standard for determining if an
>> election is rigged. By that standard, every federal election, both
>> presidential and mid-term, has been rigged.
>>
>> J.
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 9:46 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> A FB sage (& P-lister) recently reasoned that Hillary's loss proved that she
>>> was the "wrong candidate" for this election, presumably as a lesson to be
>>> learned for the future.  I challenged that we had the "wrong electorate,"
>>> willing to vote for a clearly visible moral monster over a qualified and
>>> rational human being.  His counter was that her loss was proof of his
>>> thesis: She lost, therefore she was the wrong candidate.
>>>
>>> Beneath his logic was a belief that Trump voters first need to be
>>> understood, and not destained.  Understanding is always useful, but it
>>> doesn't follow that such understanding will become mutual. Nor should it
>>> imply that opposition to those assholes should become less vehement.
>>> Understanding a rapist doesn't make him sympathetic.
>>>
>>> Hillary's loss doesn't make her the wrong candidate. It only means she lost.
>>> By absurd logic she only became the wrong candidate at the moment of her
>>> loss.  Before that we all knew she was winning.  And this absurd logic is
>>> accepted as the premise for too much post-loss analysis.  Trumps voters are
>>> a mix of deplorables, nihilists, racists, opportunists, religionists, and a
>>> list of other "wrong" electorate qualities.  Our country is less noble than
>>> many of us thought.
>>>
>>> Lesson learned?
>>> David Morris
>>>
>>>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l