On today’s BradCast: Will the 2016 Presidential election be publicly hand-counted (what some call a ‘recount’)? Should it be? Experts, citing anomalies in the reported results and other concerns, are beginning to say ‘yes’. But action would need to be taken — and a lot of money raised — by one or more of the Presidential candidates quickly in order for that to happen. [Audio link to full show follows below.]
I haven’t been the only one asking questions about the reliability of the reported results of the November 8, 2016 election and whether voters should have confidence in the computer-tallied results. As we’ve been reporting since Election Day, there are a lot of folks looking at the numbers and asking questions about what actually did — or didn’t — happen. A number of world class computer science, voting system and election integrity experts are beginning to urge for a public count of the election in a number of key states.
With approximately 100,000 total votes (out of more than 13 million cast), reportedly separating Clinton and Trump in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania alone, I can confirm that a number of those experts believe it would be a worthwhile exercise to file for hand-counts to make sure the results are correct. (Remember, just 50,000 votes recorded for Clinton instead of Trump across those three states would mean she, not Trump, becomes the next President of the United States.)
Today we look at just a few of the anomalies that have been widely cited today by some of the nation’s top election experts, such as more votes reportedly cast in the Presidential election than the “Total Votes Cast” in a number of Wisconsin counties — at least according to the counties’ initially reported results.
Author and long-time election integrity journalist Steven Rosenfeld of Alternet recently wrote about just some of the concerns being analyzed and noted by experts that both he and I have been speaking with in the days since the election. He joins me to discuss concerns and discrepancies in several states where hand-counted “recounts” could, potentially, flip the results of the Electoral College and the Trump/Clinton election along with it.
“The big point here is we don’t really know — still — what the actual count is,” Rosenfeld tells me. “I, like everybody else, would like to really know what happened. And I can accept the results if I know that they’re true and accurate…so let’s make sure that people’s votes are accurately counted. ”
We also discuss the challenges that would be faced by a candidate calling for such a count and the money (lots of it, about $2 million per state) that they would need to raise in a hurry in order to get such a hand-count and a forensic analysis of voting systems and tabulators in the states where experts are saying the effort may be well worth it.
NOTE: Since getting off air, where both Rosenfeld and I needed to talk around the record a bit, Gabriel Sherman at New York magazine offers some details about some of what is going on.
Also today: The effort some activists are making to urge Trump electors to change their vote before casting it in the Electoral College on December 19th.
It’s happening. It’s finally getting some possibly national attention on it. It’ll be a miracle if Hillary follows through, but you never know. In any case love that there is some goddamn bigger coverage beginning to happen.
David –
More tomorrow. If I make it. 🙂
Brad, I see that the push back has already started. Including a lot from Nate Silver and Nate Cohn. As far as I understand it, when Nate Cohn and Nate Silver(the Natesayers?) dismiss the possibility of some kind of machine malfunction by saying if you “control” for this and “control” for that, they’re engaging in doublespeak, aren’t they? What I understood from your recent most stimulating conversation with Jonathan Simon is that the word “controlling” in this case simply means accepting uncritically the error-prone, easy to hack, programmed in secret machine count. Right?
ps–please don’t bother answering this if it’s a choice between that and taking care of a cold or anything else regarding your health.
pps–Nate Silver used to be untouchable because he was so right in his predictions. He’s always bugged the shit outtta me because he, like so many others, takes absolutely no accounting for the very real possibility of machine error of some kind. But now when he was supposedly so spectacularly wrong in his predictions why the hell should we listen to him regarding an alternative reasonable explanation as to why his recent predictions might have been accurate like his previous ones? It’s all cockamamie.
In 2004 it was the Green Party and Libertarian party that made the recount happen here in Ohio. We all know what was uncovered then. I’m in Cuyahoga and it was an eye opener for us. I’ve been urging all of my contacts to get the Greens and Libertarians to do it again.
Interesting that Brad mentioned that in 2012 Obama won Luzerne County, PA by 5% and that Trump carried Luzerne by 20%,
Luzerne deploys the infamous iVotronic touch screens. As has been so common in the past, during the 2016 general election voters complained that they saw their votes flipped on screen.
Great information about Outagamie county. Has anyone reported on the 3000 votes for Trump that appear to have disappeared from the Wisconsin county of Waukesha between the vote counts reported in the Mass Media and the vote counts now posted on the Waukesha website? I’ve linked to both at http://econdataus.com/election16.htm#VoteChange .