On today’s BradCast, the latest breaking news on how broken optical-scan tabulation computers may have undermined the ability to count tens of thousands of ballots in Michigan — specifically in or near Detroit — and much more “recount” 2016 related news, even from Vermont! [Audio link to show is posted below.]
With a reported margin of just over 10,000 votes for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in MI — out of some 5 million votes tallied in the state — the ability to hand-count tens of thousands of votes in Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s federal court-ordered [PDF] “recount” may be at risk of “chaos” under state law, thanks to the failure of computerized paper-ballot optical-scanners which may have mistallied ballots in some fashion on Election Day.
Hopefully, hand-counts can reconcile mismatches between poll book signatures and computer printouts from “610 of 1,680” precincts in Wayne County, which includes heavily Democratic-leaning Detroit, where “392 of 662” or 59% of precincts may now be uncountable. That’s a major concern, obviously, not just due to the state’s razor thin margin, but also, as Stein points out today, since some 75,000 ballots — until now, completely unexamined by human beings — were reported by the computers to have no vote at all for President. That’s a 70% increase from 2012 in the number of ballots reported to have Presidential undervotes, a number that is more than seven-fold the margin of votes that could flip the state from Trump to Clinton.
All of that as Team Trump ups their efforts in both state and federal court to stop the counting in MI entirely and as Stein pushes back in both court cases, including a move to force the recusal of two state Supreme Court judges named by Trump as potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees.
Also, while a recent change to state law by Republicans in WI has resulted in many of the largest counties simply running paper ballots through the same computer scanners that tallied them (either correctly or incorrectly, who knows?) the first time in that state’s “recount”, it’s not just Republicans who prefer unverified computer tallies over hand-counts. In Vermont, the will of the voters may never been known in two exceedingly close state legislative races, thanks to a 2014 state law supported Democrats, requiring that computers, not people, tally ballots during ongoing “recounts” there. Two incumbent Democratic lawmakers who supported the new law may now be undone by it, as one is set to lose a “recounted” race by just six votes, and the other is facing a tie, depending on whether two questionably marked paper ballots were tallied by the scanner or not. (I wonder how they could figure out if they were?)
All of that may be good news to the Washington Post, however, which published an op-ed yesterday explaining why the authors believe, in contravention of computer scientists and voting systems experts, that “computers are better than humans at counting ballots.” Of course, to know that for certain, the authors suggest…um…counting ballots by hand.
Also on today’s BradCast: Al Gore meets with Donald Trump to discuss Climate Change and Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report on the weekend’s victory for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe against the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, on Trump reportedly eying Native American lands for energy development and Exxon Mobile’s CEO for Sec. of State, and a bit of good renewable energy news out of Texas (of all places)…
An article on the EPA in Truthout suggests Regulatory Capture is likely at work in that agency.
How the hck do we stop Regulatory Capture of environmental agencies?
IMO, this is a key issue environmentalists
must face these days.
Or lose the war.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/i...documents-show
The portion of the MI recount law that allows original counts to stand whenever the Board of Canvassers determines the precinct is not eligible for recount (such as when numbers of ballots and Voters don’t match) is a safe harbor for both error and fraud. Do I need to say that is outrageous?
Any election rigger with half a brain would realize upon reading MCL 168.871 (3) that whatever they succeed in doing is going to be immune from recount as long as ballots don’t match numbers of voters who sign in. And any poll worker forgetting to cross off voters or crossing off additional voters from pollbooks can accomplish the same result, knowingly or not.
There are other possible explanations such as jamming machines. But does it matter whether it is intentional or not? Only for political and criminal law purposes– the damage to democracy (true vote counts) is the same regardless of whether the error is intentional, negligent or accidental
That said, let’s not forget that an intentional effort may be made to look inadvertent.
Still worse, a hacker of the adverse party could hack precincts that are strong for the other party, reduce them say 10%, and have it look for all the world that the other party was messing around or screwing up in their own strongholds. Brilliant.
What this means is that a recount will definitely not disprove a hack in Michigan. But anyway, recounts only test for counting errors, not Traditionally stuffed ballot boxes, votes cancelled by a nonvoter over voting the ballot, and other things.
So here’s my read of the Michigan state law: If you want to cook dinner, and you know some food ls likely to be rotten or spoiled, you can look in the refrigerator for rot. But, if you happen to see any actual evidence of rot, you have to eat that food. How far off am I from the situation?
You would think that since it took 3 WEEKS to tally up the Michigan ballots and certify the results that indeed a huge mess has been exposed.
Why did it take so long and was the delay intentional?
DonL we need a SmartWater, nano-signature or genetic sequence signature added to every companies discharge operations that involve waste discharge. Then we can track that discharge to those who would be at fault. We would no longer need guess who dun it.