This article spreads strong claims about a possible election conspiracy, yet seems to have little interest in verifying any of it and just runs with what they agree with.
The first part “The Data” discusses several statistical oddities, it then ends with the following statement:
One data scientist crunched the numbers: “It’s north of a 35 billion to 1 probability that you could win seven out of seven outside of recount range with less than 50% of the vote.”
It doesn’t mention who that “data scientist” is.
The next part “Election Software Compromised” starts off with telling that activists broke into election polling booths and downloaded copies of the software used to count the votes, then states those were hired by the Trump’s lawyers. Then it suggests that the source code could be used to create malicious versions of the software. It fails to mention how these would be installed en masse and by whom and just decided the voting machine software is compromised now. They’re technically not saying the software on the voting machines was comprised, but they were heavily implying it, and most reader who don’t develop software themselves will probably read it as such.
Then we continue “The Hack” (we’re just throwing the could haves out of the window now?). It starts with this fantastic quote:
“I think he’s guilty as fuck,” said Spoonamore.
This part kind of sums up the entire article, all claims are based off the writings of Stephen Spoonamore (“hacking and counter-hacking expert, cyber-security adviser, and government contractor" who’s apparently so good at cybersecurity that nothing about him can be found except for election interference claims).
Starlink was used to connect the election services to the internet in certain counties. Spoonamore also claims that Musk supplied all seven of the swing states with free Starlink service to make their ePollbooks work faster.
So? We’ve had HTTPS since 2000, this alone doesn’t make it insecure, but it’s yet another part that prepares for the following finale:
However, this hack could be deployed using any network connection. With the ePollbooks connected to the internet, it would have been possible to hack into the system and, using voter profiles of each registered voter who had been checked into a polling station, determine which candidate was gaining in each state. In the final hours, it would have then been possible, using the secondary pollbook created by the $1 million sweepstake, to determine which Trump voters had not shown up and mark enough of them on the ePollbook as having voted. These become the bullet ballots. Only 400,000 of them were necessary to tip this election—at one point Musk tweeted that millions had signed up to his pledge.
Spoonamore explains that with the ePollbook data updated to reflect the desired result, votes would then need to be added to the tabulation machines to match the ePollbook. The machines could have been “digitally stuffed” either over a network connection (facilitated by the compromised software on these machines) or via physical access to the tabulation machine. A second possibility involves the same compromise as above plus “human ballot stuffing”. He notes this could be the reason bullet ballots fall heavily in just a few counties.
“It’s actually a pretty standard hack,” he said.
The article covers itself quite well with all the could’ve would’ve been possible’s, but it still presents this scenario as very likely despite the mountain of assumptions leading up to it.
The final
disclaimerpart, starts with this:Is this just “BlueAnon”?
Is this just the Left’s version of right-wing conspiracy theories that have played an outsize role in destabilising our institutions? Perhaps. But…
Then it’s not very responsible to just spread it wildly in the first ¾ of the article, is it?
I should have stuck with the original open letter from eight credible ecomputer scientists and election officials, the court-documented testimony, confessions from Trump lawyers and video footage rather than including the article featuring the other scientist that scares everybody.
this is the credibly sourced open letter to Hatris I read first, from eight computer security experts and election officials coming to the same actionable conclusion without extrapolating any numbers:
https://freespeechforpeople.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/letter-to-vp-harris-111324-1.pdf
Sorry friend, but it’s time to let this one go: https://www.snopes.com/news/2024/11/21/stephen-spoonamore-letter-harris/
Remember that we’re not like the Republicans - when confronted with claims of election tampering, we check whether the claims actually hold water, and it appears that they don’t.
Better spend your effort on figuring out how to get better results next election.
you are either being disingenuous or wildly uninformed.
Iit’s okay if you don’t like that one scientist. because there are dozens of other computer security experts who have come to the same conclusion, that since Trump’s lawyers admitted to hiring people to steal voting software used by 90% of voters in swing states, manual recounts should be implemented.
The Republicans have zero evidence of election interference.
democrats have straight up factual evidence of ballot, interference and electoral fraud.
do you know about how W won the 2004 election?
do you know about the fake elector scheme 4 years ago?
have you ever heard of gerrymandering?
voter poll purging?
Republican ballot interference has happened every election for decades, and it looks like it happened on a wider scale this time.
Iit’s okay if you don’t like that one scientist. because there are dozens of other computer security experts who have come to the same conclusion, that since Trump’s lawyers admitted to hiring people to steal voting software used by 90% of voters in swing states, manual recounts should be implemented.
Feel free to source it with concrete probable claims that have been verified by reputable sources.
I think manual counting should be the norm - all votes are counted manually in my country - but it’s unlikely that you will be able to get anyone to actually pull the trigger without concrete evidence of interference.
The Republicans have zero evidence of election interference.
Agreed.
democrats have straight up factual evidence of ballot, interference and electoral fraud.
Post it, then.
do you know about how W won the 2004 election?
I know how the 2000 election got stolen by Bush, but I’m not aware of the same thing happening in 2004. Feel free to fill in details.
do you know about the fake elector scheme 4 years ago?
Yes. It was never put into practice. Trump did try to institute a coup, but failed.
have you ever heard of gerrymandering?
Yes, this is a well-known example of legal election interference. Hand-counts won’t help in this case.
voter poll purging?
Same here
Republican ballot interference has happened every election for decades, and it looks like it happened on a wider scale this time.
Instances of legal election interference are not proof of illegal election interference occurring.
“Feel free to source it with concrete probable claims”
19 credible sources are available throughout the paper that you didn’t read and you are mosinformed about both the stolen voting machine data and the fake electors scheme.
if you don’t know any of this, you’re out of your depth here.
“concrete evidence of interference.”
Great, there is a mountain of concrete evidence of election and ballot interference over the past several years, up to today.
from 4 years ago, then 2 years ago, then during the 2024 election, and in between.
you’re not making any sense.
the open letter and even wikipedia directly provides the evidence you claim to be interested in.
“Yes. It was never put into practice. Trump did try to institute a coup, but failed.”
nope, you are entirely incorrect here as well.
The fake electors scheme was put into practice nationally. fake electors mailed out false ballots to NARA and Mike Pence in an effort to steal the election before the real ballots arrived in the mail.
The National Archives discovered that the ballots were false and negated them.
The fake electore scheme absolutely went into practice, people have admitted to participating in it, taken guilty plea deals and are still going through trials because of their participation in the fake electors scheme.
If you need more clarification, ask questions but for goodness’ sake, read something first so you have a baseline of knowledge before you talk about something.
you’re entirely misinformed with regard to recent election interference.
Do you have a better source than the state election results websites? If the premise of the whole argument was bullet votes, but the actually numbers are <2% instead of the claimed amount, what is the evidence?
that is not “the premise of the whole argument”
read the meticulously sourced open letter based court verified testimony and documents.
pdf:
https://freespeechforpeople.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/letter-to-vp-harris-111324.pdf
Risk that something might have happened is a good enough reason for audits/recounts should be done in time to fix the election outcome, but they’re not evidence that such hacks were successfully used. They just provide a mechanism that makes it possible.
“provide a mechanism that makes it possible.”
yup.
“a good enough reason for audits/recounts should be done in time to fix the election outcome”
yup.
do you know about how W won the 2004 election?
He got more votes than Kerry, winning the popular vote (unlike his first election)
this was because the Kerry campaign failed to meet the moment, running an “I could run this war better” pro-war campaign.
This isn’t (and has never been) a democracy because the power is not with the people, institutions like the supreme court, the electoral college, the Senate, and the allocation of representatives make sure of that.
sure, kind of.
that all obligly agrees with what I’ve been saying.
you finally read some of those sources?
I’m very pro better late than never, good on you.
in the future, I’d appreciate it if you read things you comment on first before making claims based on assumptions.
have a good one
I didn’t find any of the arguments compelling, I’m just not particularly enchanted by this electoral system because it’s a fig leaf for a bourgeois dictatorship, and has been for some time. Just because you vote doesn’t mean it’s a democracy.
My position is that the fix has been in for a lot longer, there’s been basically no US presidents that have actually represented the entire population, it’s always businesses and settlers first (hence all the wars)
as long as you’re choosing to be in that system, the will of the electorate should be exerted to its side host when choosing their president.
the alternative you are suggesting is that because there are outsized special interests influencing you a selection, people shouldn’t have any say.
which I cannot agree with.
it’s a popular, simple opinion, doesn’t require you to do anything but it certainly doesn’t change anything for the better or have any positive benefits.
nobody’s arguing that the fix you’re talking about isn’t in, those computer scientists and I agree that we should try to fix the fix.
the alternative you are suggesting is that because there are outsized special interests influencing you a selection, people shouldn’t have any say.
No, I’m saying that they never had a say, and you’re imagining popular power that never existed. For most of the US existence only white men could vote for one, the franchise was eventually extended but any influence voting has always been overdetermined by the existence of the electoral college.
The fixating on a few times the election didn’t go your way just looks like nursing bruised egos instead of focusing on productive work and developing a better understanding of our politics.
Regardless of the outsized influence special interests have, Americans have had and still have a say in who they elect.
you are fixating on how difficult change is instead of understanding that things perpetually change and it’s the fight to change systems that changes systems.
you’re fighting for futility, I’m advocating realistic change.
you might be bummed out because of the election results, but that’s no reason to stop making things better.
you’re still here and so is everybody else, and in the Cassandric words of steve Harwell,
“We could all use a little chaaaAAAnge”.
I am gonna go ahead and just ignore the .ml on this one. Likely just another CCP goon.
for sure. I have the time though, so I don’t mind putting up facts each time they spout off.
Fair enough.
It literally hurts no one to do some audits to be sure. No whining or streaming “stolen election”…just audits in key places to make sure it is above board. Any argument against it is maga/CCP(.ml)/ork interference.
exactly.
it’s bizarre that manual ballot counts with oversight are not the norm, all they can do is establish what happened.
there’s no downside.
Easy enough to disprove. Do the hand recounts in the supposedly affected states. If those hand recounts aren’t done, there’s going to be a lot of progressives who spend the next four years looking as lunatic as the “stop the steal” people - with the difference being that there was a really easy way to disprove the lunacy that wasn’t used, whereas the “stop the steal” was disproven multiple times and even went to court repeatedly.
So, what I’m saying, just do the damn recount so we can put this thing to rest.
Nah, harris already threw in the towel. She will not call for a recount, i guarantee it.
I’m actually pissed off at the Democratic party about just rolling over.
If Harris won you’re damn sure we’d be flooded with “investigations”, “evidence”, lawsuits and recounts. The news would be flooded with it.
Once Trump won all that shit just disappeared even though the reds have been prepping to fight for months.
Harris had a shit ton of money donated to her campaign. Why not hire a shit ton of lawyers and set them loose??
Democrat Strategy: Beg, then bend over and spread wide.
(Not that there’s anything wrong with that in your private life, but when you’re in public office, you kinda have a responsibility to be representatively picky about who you bend over for)
So instead we’re going to have to listen to half-baked conspiracy theories for the next few years in addition to everything else. Gah!
i remember the gore voters in 2000 who insisted it had been stolen.
and it was.
Gore actually won the popular vote, unlike this time
gore would have won the electoral college if the supreme court hadn’t fucked it around. the recounts took time.
true that. exactly.
do the manual recounts since the software was compromised and tons of computer specialists are worried about that and let’s put it to rest.
I don’t even think they need to do entire states before deciding whether a widespread recount is needed.
IIRC there are even specific counties with headscratching results in battleground states. Grab a handful of those. If there’s fire, it will be found, and then we can mobilize for a wider recount. I’m sure that’s still a shitload of work, but prob less than recounting an entire state.
I’ve been hoping that this is their plan, but I’ll admit that (especially given her concession) each passing day I have less faith in this.
The AOC “what happened was massive, you all need to just wait a minute while we figure out what we’re doing” (paraphrase) video from a few days ago gave me a little spark of hope, but I suspect even that was not her saying anything other than “we’re going to do what we can to mitigate the damage.”
It’s funny when you can’t tell if a post is satire or serious but deranged.
Either way, Musk doesn’t have the skills required to do anything involving stealing or effecting the outcome of an election. Dude can’t even sway his own piss poor polls on Twitter.
Enjoy chasing this down to disassociate with what’s going on in the country for the next 4 years. Looks comfy, like really comfy.
I may slip on a pair of [conspiracy theory] myself at some point!
We knew damn well that Trump and co. were preparing to attempt to steal the election if necessary. We knew and have been documenting that Trump and co. were installing and/or trying to install sympathetic election officials everywhere they could in the last 4 years. We know damn well that Trump and co. already tried to cheat in the last election, e.g. trying to get Brad Raffensperger to “find me 11,780 votes” in Georgia in 2020. We know that Trump and co. are fighting hard in court anywhere they can to have mail in ballots thrown out, e.g. in Pennsylvania. We know Trump sycophants have been setting fire to absentee ballot boxes. These are not the actions of a campaign expecting to win legitimately.
Even sitting here as a random largely uneducated chump on the internet, not even rising to the level of armchair expert, I can see that the latest election results need to be investigated and validated and verified as thoroughly as humanly possible, on every level, to find where – not if – Trump’s cronies cheated. Whether or not they cheated enough to actually affect the ultimate outcome if the election is less clear, but let’s not kid ourselves. The chances that this was a completely straight and honest election are, without a doubt, zero.
If Dickhead really did win after all that, then he won. But the process must be totally transparent. There is no other way for it to maintain any semblance of legitimacy.
Just pointing out one detail: it doesn’t matter how many people voted for him, his second administration will never be legitimate because him serving another term is a constitutional violation after inciting an insurrection against the US government. The fact that the Republicans obviously aren’t going to do anything about that, Democrats don’t have the spine to do anything about that, and the judiciary is pretty much stacked with Trump cronies, doesn’t change the fact that his administration will be an illegal one from the moment he’s sworn in.
Okay Q!
I feel like the article was pretty tongue in cheek about the reason for the bullet vote statistical anomaly. They went right from the conspiracy theory that. machines were hacked in swing states to Musk’s fake giveaway that incentivized people to sign up to vote in swing states.
It’s like, gee, do you think they’re trying to suggest maybe there’s a reason that people who would only be interested in one race may have skewed things a little? Add a dash of targeting your marketing (to conservatives), and maybe coordination with a PAC that can phone bank, and well, folks who may not normally vote might vote for just the one big election.
And there’s your statistical anomaly. No computer hacking. Just game theory, targeted advertising, and an endless torrent of texts and calls.Incidentally, my phone number is one that’s, well, kind of fake sounding. It’s 3 sets of 2 (in the same row!), and one adjacent singlet, like (but not actually) 99-77-88-5. And I get a lot of other people’s calls and messages. I let down a lot of teenage boys back when exchanging numbers was how people DM’d. Anyway, a few of the wayward texts this year were from Trump’s PAC talking about this contest. But I didn’t hear shit about it from any of the democratic PAC’s!
So that’s sort of what I think explains what they’re talking about. Shitty and probably illegal, sure? A conspiracy? Meh.
A spear phishing style marketing tactic that worked, spearheaded by 150 million of revenue from a desperate billionaire.
These people who voted the top of the ticket only were Joe Rogan listeners, and people who were duped by the million dollar giveaways. IMO, this is evidence of success, not evidence of foul play.
But honestly, if people are willing to check, I’m willing to let them. I’m just not gonna cry over this spilled mil… country.
what are you talking about?
your comment makes zero sense.
This is a very comforting thought, that what you saw with your eyes, what was ratified by congress, didn’t happen that way. People are smarter than that, right! It seems so insane that it did.
You can now spend the next 4 years of this waking nightmare chasing down news about this conspiracy, and i think that seems very comforting. I might even adopt it at some point if it gets compelling enough.
“This is a very comforting thought”
sounds like you’re confused.
“that what you saw with your eyes, what was ratified by congress, didn’t happen that way”
aw, you’re very confused.
“People are smarter than that”
not sure what you’re referring to, but I’m glad you did an include yourself in that bubble.
looks like you have no counter argument. do any of the facts here or the election fraud scheme that happened and that people are convicted for and are still being convicted for?
cool, thanks for supporting my argument.
You are genuinely welcome!
some diaper boasted before the election “we have the votes”
diaper? is that what magaheads are called now?
I’m partial to calling them “fascists” myself, since that’s what they’re clearly supporting
Stop saying Trump didn’t steal the election.
his lawyers literally had the voting software stolen, as court documents show, and it’s a historical and statistical stark improbability that this many people only voted for the president on their ballots, only in the seven swing states, and only with just enough of a margin to avoid a manual recount.
you clearly didn’t read the article.
these are facts that computer security experts are putting forth as evidence that the election was manipulated.
You clearly didn’t watch the video (how could you within 1 minute). It references the guy who wrote the first open letter.
“It references the guy who wrote the first open letter.”
did you watch the video?
her conclusion is, “that guy was right before, the Republicans did steal the election in 2000, but maybe he isn’t correct this time?”
maybe. let’s do the recounts and see if those votes are there.
I think it makes sense to listen to the guy who was right about the Republicans stealing the election last time since we have evidence that they tried to steal the election 4 years ago, like straight up admitted by the electors who committed fraud.
your video supports my point.
her conclusion is, “that guy was right before, the Republicans did steal the election in 2000, but maybe he isn’t correct this time?”
lol, nope. Not what she said in the video. That guy didn’t complain in 2000. He did so in 2004, though.
You didn’t watch it.
sure, that’s how I referenced all of her points and showed that they matched up with exactly what I said and what the article says.
We just happened to guess the exact right stuff together about a video that’s been circulating.
how I referenced all of her points
What? When? Where?
that they matched up with exactly what I said and what the article says.
Lol, sure. /s
literally above.
I get that reading is difficult for you so you don’t want to mess with it, but if you read, and then you watch the video you didn’t watch yet, she says the same thing I did.
The guy was right before, we should do a recount, she just wants to pretend that “conspiracies” aren’t real despite the elector fraud scheme that happened 4 years ago.
while she literally lists conspiracies that happen every election season from the Republicans.
I can see why you were confused by the video, but I appreciate its support for my points.
also, the first open letter was written by eight different computer scientists who are not the guy you’re trying to nitpick about.
Stop making things up.
I’ve seen that defeatist video several times.
Rebecca Watson right-wing? 🤣🤣🤣
Yeah, sure you did. /s
" Rebecca Watson right-wing"
Why do you think she’s right-wing?
“Yeah, sure you did”
Just because you don’t care about the facts doesn’t mean nobody else does.
enjoy your nitpicking.
You claimed she was right wing and then edited your comment. What the fuck are you trying to pull off here.
sorry I edited a comment before you replied to it.
you could have actually made a point.
must be rough.
you are delusional.
I watched your silly video.
do you also not believe in the fraudulent electors scheme that has been documented and happened and people have been convicted for?
do you not believe in the call Trump made to Georgia to try to literally create votes out of nothing?
you can post baseless YouTube videos all you want, they don’t contradict the facts.
I watched your silly video.
When? In the one minute it took you to reply to me posting it? /s
Have fun in your world of conspiracies.
I’ve seen that trash several times now
mega heads have been posting it.
have fun making things up.
have fun making things up.
Says the person whose primary source pretty much only writes in conditionals and calls them “facts”.
If you watched it so often, why don’t you address her points, then?
I literally addressed her points in the other comment.
which part confused you?
she basically agrees with me.
the guy was right before in 2004, we know that Republicans do steal elections and try to steal one 4 years ago, so we should do recounts this time.
you didn’t watch her video did you?
you just went along with the headline.
Stop saying Trump stole the 2024 election
Yeah the convicted criminal with a clear history of stealing and cheating in every election hes ever been in… stop saying that guy is a cheater. Sure thing.
Good thing he’s not the sole person in carge of the election, then, huh?
Also: not what I said. 🙄
Elon Musk is indeed guilty as fuck, Starlink was used to delete the votes.
Why were the polls right for Down-Ballot votes, but not the Presidency?
Starlink was used to delete the votes.
Neat trick, doing that on air gapped machines.
Ok, I’ll indulge you. How?
