A woman working for an NSA contractor heard a podcast by The Intercept in which Glenn Greenwald and others expressed skepticism about Russian hacking of the 2016 election.
According to news reports, she copied top-secret evidence and sent it to The Intercept to prove that Russians hacked into election software before the 2016 election.
“On March 22, The Intercept hosted a podcast online looking at, among other things, the public outcry over Russia’s alleged collusion with associates of President Donald Trump and the Kremlin’s alleged interference in last year’s presidential election.
“Host Jeremy Scahill said “there is a tremendous amount of hysterics” and “a lot of premature conclusions being drawn around all of this Russia stuff,” but “there’s not a lot of hard evidence to back it up.”
“Appearing as a guest on the podcast, Intercept reporter Glenn Greenwald agreed, saying that while “it’s very possible” Russia was behind election-related hacks last year, “we still haven’t seen any evidence for it.”
“Little more than a week later, Winner allegedly used a Gmail account to contact The Intercept, and she “appeared to request transcripts of a podcast,” court documents said.
“More than a month later, the NSA secretly issued the classified document now at the center of the leak case. And within days, Winner allegedly found it, printed it out and mailed it to The Intercept.”
In short, she sent The Intercept some concrete evidence of Russian hacking of our election.
We will be hearing more about this. If the Russian cyber-spies hacked into voting machines, Trump may be an illegitimate president. He may have lost both the popular vote and the electoral college.
Remember that Trump kept insisting it was “a rigged election.” Little did we know.

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They may have been trying to make people’s voter registration invalid — people who would have found out only after showing up and waiting in line to vote.
This Russian hacking attempt is eerily similar to Kris Kobach’s Crosscheck program, which was instituted by Republicans across 22 states, including swing states, to surreptitiously purge Dems from the voter rolls. Koback is now co-chairing Trump’s new “voter fraud” commission so he can implement Crosscheck across the nation. Did he provide guidance to the Russians so they’d know who to target?
(Crosscheck succeeded in purging hundreds of thousands of Dem-leaning voters from the rolls prior to the election by targeting names based on ethnicity, all under the guise of removing voters registered in more than one state but conveniently not matching Social Security numbers or even middle names. It’s spelled out in this 8/24/16 article in Rolling Stone: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-gops-stealth-war-against-voters-w435890 )
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I agree but everyone of those voters should have filled out a provisional ballot . That is the only way to stop the rt, through the courts .
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Mom2Twins… YES YES YES… I was thinking the very same thing as I had read about this crosscheck system and then saw a program about it. In the program it also revealed how many targeted people (predominantly poor and African American) had their ballots cancelled for a host of reasons (and they were not even made aware of this and thought they actually voted).
Let us hope that Comey’s memo is the final push to get this impeachment ball rolling!! Our democracy is being made sadly into a farce with Trump at the helm. Everyone Trump appoints is done so for his ability to manipulate or fire if manipulation won’t work!
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Joel Herman… in this account from what I read, the provisional ballots were equally as bad. There were so many ways that one could make an error on completing the ballot and never even know it. The result… they thought they were voting but in actuality, their ballot was cancelled. They went over NUMEROUS ways that they could make “an error” and it was absurd and very possible to err.
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It’s obvious that the cross check program was corrupt.
Somehow the Republicans who WERE registered in 2 states — like Bannon, Kushner, Mnuchin, and his daughter Tiffany were NOT struck from the rolls and they did NOT have to vote on provisional ballots.
No doubt there were many thousands of Republicans like Kushnner and Bannon who had double registered and somehow cross check missed them.
Cross Check didn’t want to find Republicans registered twice, only likely Democrats.
The Trump campaign had contacts with Russian intelligence and somehow Russian intelligence COINCIDENTALLY knew just which areas to hack?
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Yes, Trump did repeatedly say the election was rigged, but he also said that if he won that didn’t matter. He never said if he won, the election wasn’t rigged.
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I thought he said that if he lost, it would be because the election was rigged….which leads me to believe that he knew it was rigged in his favor and he was doing his typical deflect and distract routine.
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Yes.
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Uday and Qusay said they hasd no business in Russia. They did not day Russia had no business in them.
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had
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Diane:
Read the following OpEdNews article CAREFULLY. The NSA leaker shared with The Intercept that Russians ATTEMPTED to hack the election, NOT THAT THEY SUCCEEDED. Also, those attempts were NOT what caused Hillary to lose. The leaker’s leak again shows we MUST have paper ballots counted under strict, public supervision, NOT computerized voting machines which MAY be hackable. But Hillary & the DNC sabotaged Bernie Sanders’ nomination chances, then ran a terrible campaign which ignored the struggling working class and offered no compelling program to turn around the U.S. after 30 years of failed neoliberal policies and endless neocon wars, supported by BOTH corporate parties.
June 6, 2017
Leaker Reveals Russians Attempted To Hack Voting System
By Rob Kall
https://www.opednews.com/articles/Leaker-Reveals-Russians-At-by-Rob-Kall-Voting-Integrity_Voting-Laws-Federal-HAVA_Voting-Machines-170606-497.html
The NSA leak that Russians tried to hack the voting system and machines offers Election integrity activists, perhaps, the best opportunity yet to get legislation passed fo fund replacement and destruction of e-voting machines that do not produce verifiable, re-countable ballots.
The intercept reports in an article, TOP-SECRET NSA REPORT DETAILS RUSSIAN HACKING EFFORT DAYS BEFORE 2016 ELECTION,
“the report raises the possibility that Russian hacking may have breached at least some elements of the voting system, with disconcertingly uncertain results.”
I don’t believe this report affects, in any way, the claims regarding Hillary Clinton’s campaign being hacked. But it does raise one issue. It is just about treasonous, when the election system used by most states– electronic voting– is so at risk to hacking.
OpEdNews has published over 10,000 articles on the risks and dangers of electronic voting. This revelation should be picked up by every election integrity person and group as a new argument to replace every e-voting machine with systems that use fully verifiable, re-countable paper ballots.
This opportunity should be embraced, by organizations like Moveon.org, Our Revolution, Justice Democrats, and hopefully similar organizations on the right, with campaigns to contact legislators demanding that a bill be passed to fund the replacement of all e-voting machines, with the requirement that they be destroyed.
This may be the best opportunity the election integrity movement has ever had. The report certainly makes people like Chuck Todd, who has suggested that our expressions of concern have been conspiracy theories, look… well, you fill in the blank.
This new hack should lead to instant legislation to replace electronic systems that are un-recountable with paper ballot systems that are 100% verifiable and re-countable. This should be a bi-partisan 100% supported no-brainer.
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You wrote: “But Hillary & the DNC sabotaged Bernie Sanders’ nomination chances, then ran a terrible campaign which ignored the struggling working class and offered no compelling program to turn around the U.S. after 30 years of failed neoliberal policies and endless neocon wars, supported by BOTH corporate parties.”
AGREE totally.
The DNC’s Super Delegates do NOT represent me and the DNC chair and party need to be taken to court.
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Yvonne Siu-Runyan: Okay–so I guess that cancels out Trump’s way of doing things. Good–we can all go home now. Let’s just let Trump be Trump. Tra la.
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Ed,
I don’t know if Bernie would have beaten Trump, maybe he would have. Maybe not. Hillary won because she got millions more votes and more delegates than Bernie, not including super delegates.
I personally never believed that Trump won fair and square. Many candidates dropped out of races for doing and saying less than he did.
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You are right on both counts, but it gets more complicated. Hillary won because the Clinton machine would have made Boss Tweed jealous .
Turning out party hacks to act as surrogates and go betweens to the core constituencies they represent , did not mean that she would be able to mobilize the democratic base to show up in the General Election. And she didn’t . Not even in some of those core groups.
Yes Trump stole the election with the help of the Russians and Comey . That is something he was able to do because of Clinton’s failings.
Had she been a stronger candidate, she should have blown him away.
Most progressives who voted !!! for her, feared (knew) they would be let down soon after the election . She lost not because of the Trump vote but because she failed to motivate what should have been the base of the party.
Trump on the other hand did a marvelous job of bringing out all those who became Republican since the civil rights act . The business wing and holly rollers came along for the ride. And on that note
https://www.ft.com/content/b41d0ee6-1e96-11e7-b7d3-163f5a7f229c
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The Bernie bots use just as much fake news as Trump.
Right wing Senator Ron Johnson got nearly 75,000 MORE votes than Donald Trump in Wisconsin. He was running against a Bernie surrogate who was fighting for the working class.
And people think that socialist Bernie was going to get some of those voters who thought Russ Feingold was too liberal and Johnson was a great choice? Without a shred of evidence and against all logic?
Clinton “failed to motivate the base of the party” because there were too many gullible Bernie bots repeating the same tired old attacks and the Russians targeted those people for their fake news.
In fact, Hillary won margins larger than expected in NY and California where progressive weren’t nearly as gullible and couldn’t be fooled by the fake news.
That’s why there was a lower % of voters voting 3rd party in NY than in Wisconsin even though casting a protest vote in NY was far safer. But NYers did not WANT to cast that protest vote because they preferred Hillary Clinton. NYers weren’t as gullible in believing that she was the evil crook that the Wisconsin voters did.
Or maybe the Wisconsin voters were just proving that the people who voted in Scott Walker are far more likely to vote for Hilary Clinton over Trump than Bernie Sanders.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/06/05/its-time-to-bust-the-myth-most-trump-voters-were-not-working-class/?utm_term=.f0db0c555cb5
REAL working class voters did vote for Hillary. The ones who voted for Trump were never going to vote for a socialist. But some gullible young voters got told that their candidate was “betrayed” and they bought it hook, line and sinker.
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NYC public school parent
You just don’t stop do you .
Your right the Republicans posses such magical powers that Democrats have lost 1000 seats since 2008 .
Your own link proves how wrong you are.” 75,000 voters, voted for Johnson who did not vote for Trump “.
Yet Tammy Baldwin a member of the CONGRESSIONAL PROGRESSIVE CAUCUS is the other Senator from Wisconsin. Because when she ran for Senate the despised SHillary was not on the ballot . So 75,000 Republicans who could not bring themselves to vote for either the Orange haired monster or SHillary Clinton came to the polls to vote for Johnson . Where were the Democrats, that should have been an advantage of 75,000 votes in WISCONSIN where Trump won by 22,000 votes.
I agree and have said many times that the Trump voter was not the working class .the working class stayed home .
“That means that Donald Trump will become the president although he has received about 1.74 million fewer votes than 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney.”
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/millions-stay-home-allowing-trump-to-win-with-fewer-votes-than-romney/article/2606974
“In some places, the changes were more concentrated. Just three counties flipped from Obama to Trump in the Keystone State — Erie County along the Ohio border, Northampton County in the Allentown suburbs and Luzerne County, where the Wilkes-Barre suburbs. Luzerne saw a 25-point swing from Obama to Trump. Traditionally red counties in Pennsylvania, in particular, saw a massive shift in the margins toward Trump, as well.
But in Wisconsin — the state that ended up putting Trump over the top in the electoral vote early Wednesday morning — 22 counties that had once voted for Obama switched to Trump. Some of those counties — such as Sawyer, Forest and Adams — have some of the highest unemployment rates in the state.
Michigan had 12 counties that went from blue to red, including critical Macomb in the Detroit suburbs and the swing counties of Calhoun and Monroe.
Iowa had a whopping 31 of its 99 counties that went from the Obama column to Trump’s. The bellwether county of Cedar, which has picked the winner of every presidential race since 1992, again got it right. Even though Obama carried it by 4 points in 2012, Trump won it by 18 this year.
You can check out the demographic trends, unemployment data, education level in these states and more in the state tables and results complied by the NPR Visuals Team. Other states, such as Minnesota and Maine, also saw significant swings from Obama to Trump. Clinton held on narrowly to win in Minnesota, though 19 counties went from the blue to the red column from four years ago. ”
http://www.npr.org/2016/11/15/502032052/lots-of-people-voted-for-obama-and-trump-heres-where-in-3-charts
Now I see Obama and Hillary as one and the same NDC Democrats . Sanders ran against both . He had no clue that his protest candidacy would actually touch a raw nerve
in a country that was fed up with neo liberal right wing policy coming out of the mouth of democratic politicians . No place is it more evident than in the education wars, pick your poison .
I have been furious with Obama since his first transition team, politically could not stomach him. Voted twice for the man I could not stand . There was one difference between SHillary and Obama, at least Obama was likeable and had some degree of personal integrity. Qualities that Shillary had none of .
No one believed that as soon she had won the presidency she would not do an about face from the progressive Democratic Platform . Not even Diane , I would remind Diane of a frightening analysis that said Clinton would use a victory as an endorsement of her neo liberal agenda giving her license to pillage, setting back progressive politics for decades.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/13/trump-clinton-election-chances-moderate-policies-economy .
Being better than Trump personally and politically may have been enough for me. It was not enough for the American people in the once BLUE Mid West .
But seriously NYCPSP do you still pretend to have voted for Bernie in the primary
.
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Joel,
No matter what you think of Hillary, she is knowledgeable and sane.
Trump is destroying the western alliance. He insults Germany and Angela Merkel. He insults Mexico and Canada. He insults Qatar, which houses the biggest American airbase in the Mideast. He wants tax reform for the billionaires. He tweets crazy things and makes new policy during the night. He is unstable. He has dementia.
Personally I think he lost the election by every measure. He knows who made him president. It wasn’t a 400 lb man on his bed in NJ.
But I thank God for Hillary’s sake that she is not president. The Republicans would be in the midst of impeachment hearings because of…anything.
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dianeravitch: Well-said. And when Hillary was talking about the MANY causes and threads of her loss, she forgot to mention that it didn’t matter WHAT she did OR DID NOT DO, the smear-machine churned on. They smeared her regardless, and have been doing so for a very long time–about ANYTHING, real or not. If she had been an angel come down from heaven, they’d have found something to smear her about. (Remember swift-boating John Kerry; and good grief–Trump even dissed McCain’s military service!) But if it hadn’t been for the e-mail thing, or Bengazi, Bengazi, Bengazi, it would have been something else–like trafficking child sex slaves.
Any real criticism or analysis of Hillary and the build-up to the election has to be couched in that context.
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Barack Obama — who ran on a platform that was MORE conservative than Hillary Clinton — got more votes 4 years ago than she did. Joel says that is proof that Bernie would have wiped the floor with Trump. It’s just as much proof that voters rejected the Bernie-approved Hillary platform because it was too radical! (I’m not saying that it is, but just pointing out the logic fail of your argument.)
By Joel’s logic, if Obama had been eligible to run for a 3rd term, Trump would have defeated him soundly in the general election because all those voters despised Obama’s policies. Sure, polls of voters last year showed Obama approval ratings as sky high, but still, he would have lost even worse to Trump since he would have been running on a platform that was far more conservative than Hilary, who basically adopted the entire Bernie platform and voters still rejected her.
I don’t have the same absolute certainty as you do that Trump would have defeated Obama because all those voters wanted to do was send a message to reject Obama’s last 8 years of neoconservative policies. Maybe you are right and Trump would have won both the electoral vote AND the popular vote if Obama could have run for a 3rd term and given voters the chance to stick it directly to Obama and prove how much they rejected his neoconservative policies. Obviously nothing I can say will dissuade you of your absolute certainty that Trump would have handily defeated Obama “on the issues”.
But maybe if you weren’t so blinded by your certainty that Obama would have lost even worse to Trump and acknowledged that it is possible that Obama would have won a 3rd term, you’d think about the fact that the entire Russian-led propaganda campaign was about convincing gullible voters that Hillary had “stolen” the election, that she was corrupt, and that she was not to be trusted. Accusing your opponent of your own failings is the modus operandi of the right wing. And they did it to Hillary and gullible voters bought it all. With help from people like you who keep insisting that somehow this year’s DNC primary was so much more unfair than other years. Instead of realizing that perhaps the reason Bernie did get so many votes was because the DNC was bending over backward to make sure the votes were fair.
I will never dissuade you of your absolute certainty that Trump won because of the Democratic Party and that’s why Trump would have handily beaten Obama, too. To you, this wasn’t about the hated of Hillary fomented by the right wing propaganda which too many pro-Bernie folks embraced. It was about voters rejecting Obama and his policies, which is why you are so certain Obama would have lost so badly to Trump. I’m not as certain as you are but we’ll never know.
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dianeravitch
I don,t disagree with any of your description of Trump or how he lost the election . I would add a lot to it ,except the profanity would not be acceptable on your blog . I even agree it would have been four years of impeachment hearings starting on Jan 21 2017 . It would also have been four years of “compassionate” right wing policy with her name on it as were here husbands major initiatives from welfare reform and the crime bill, to trade. . Policy that would cost the Democrats another 5 states and set progressives back again. 2009 should have been “change we can believe in “. It was a black swan moment , Obama was never that agent of change. Right from the days he surrounded himself with Rubin and Summers ,.to the last days when he ran around the country telling the American people that higher drug prices in India and Vietnam was good for America workers. (TPP sarcasm noted )
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There would have been no new policies. Only blockades and deadlock.
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It’s so sexist and insulting for you to imply that Hillary is not her own woman but would simply enact the same policies as her husband.
That’s entirely based on your extreme hatred of her. Not on the way she lived her life or her embrace of Bernie’s entire platform (which is the opposite of what Obama did when he was the nominee). If you actually LISTENED to her speeches instead of reading the right wing excerpts you would have realized that even her “deplorables” speech was all about the fact that there were people left behind who had legitimate complaints and she wanted to help THEM and not Wall Street. She cared, although according to you, it was all an act just like Trump told us since she was a liar.
I agree with Diane that she would never have been allowed to enact it by the right wing. But your utter certainty that Hillary was the world’s biggest liar certainly mirrors Trump’s attacks on her. No wonder so many voters believed it when “even Hillary voters” knew she was lying through her teeth about wanting to enact the platform she was running on. You can’t stop repeating that even now. She may have run on Bernie platform, but she was planning to do everything Bill told her to do.
What was it about the platform that Hillary was running on that you despise? I bet you agree with nearly every position she took in her platform. But you bought into the right wing propaganda that she was lying to us about her support for virtually all of Bernie’s policies. Because her husband would have ordered her to follow his orders. Or she’s just corrupt. I’m not sure which.
Hillary lost because people believed she was a corrupt liar. And every time you post about her convinces me that you absolutely believe it yourself. You haters bought into the propaganda that she had no intention of enacting the Bernie platform that she was running on because all she cared about was rewarding the same rich Wall Street people that Obama did. Because she’s a woman and follows her husband’s policies like all good women do? Or just because you were mad at Obama but found it easier to scapegoat Hillary for his failures?
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NYC public school parent
Lets see I am a Bernie Bro or a Bernie bot I read right wing propaganda and it is sexist of me me to attack Hillary for standing with her man, politically that is. I guess Michelle Alexander did the same, is she an anti female sexist female? . The next time we get into this. I will post for you my anti Hillary list it wont be too long because one of her few remarkable moments was her flip on the Bankruptcy bill which hurt WORKING class Americans especially poor women .
The TPP was the GOLD standard till it wasn’t. But then Thomas J. Donohue president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said “have no fear she is with US “.
A much longer list to come and FOX is on parental block and the NY Post is not fit for toilet paper. Thomas Friedman is as far right as I go in the NYT and I haven’t read him since he said we need a little crazy sometimes referring to Rumsfeld .
I am sure we will continue .
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I remember the delight with which Trump said “the election is rigged!”
But of course the CIA and FBI are the main sources of fake news (that’s what the “base” will be led to think).
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Accuse your enemy of the crimes you’re committing: Republican playbook.
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ponderosa Republican and Russian.
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Yup, Trump does this, such as when he discounts the size of the crowds protesting against him. He says they were paid to attend but that’s because HE paid actors who work as extras to come to Trump Tower and show support for him when he announced his intent to run for president.
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. . . and Comey is a grandstander.
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Having once been a No Such Person working at the No Such Agency, and prior to that having served in its then-direct extension, the US Army Security Agency, and in both cases having had a security clearance above top secret, Trump and his Russia mess aside, I must say I find Reality Winner’s seemingly selfish, immature act represents a grave breach of trust. And by trust, I don’t mean loyalty such as that Trump wanted of Comey.
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Ed Johnson Yes. Exactly. And anything that Trump doesn’t like is “politicized,” which means to Trump, if it comes from those who are being loyal to the Constitution, then it’s a sign they are being disloyal to him.
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I absolutely believe and always have the election machines were hacked. How easy would it be to change one or two votes per precinct in WI. MI, PA, which ultimately changed electoral college? We may never get proof but that doesn’t mean it didnt happen. Illegitimate in every possible way. Sad.
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Electronic machines have got to go. It’s not too hard for us to count paper ballots. (And let’s go back to paper tests while we’re at it).
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Agreed. The electronic machines were proven a long time ago they could be hacked and had things built into them to throw votes to a certain candidate. The people that built were shown and one brought it out instead of hiding it and she got screwed big time.
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Ask Michael Connell, former Republican technology election consultant.
Oh, what? He’s dead? In a small plane crash? Can you say Ohio 2004?
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So we’re killing the messenger again instead of going after the criminal. Typical government action, cover up, cover up , deny, deny, lie, lie, blame somebody else.
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Not me. I called Schumer , Gillibrand and Suozzi . Asked them why were the specific states not warned of the threat. The general public not informed of it prior to the election nor prior to the electoral college certification. Not until a an American Patriot leaked it to the press.
I asked each to go to the floor of the Senate or House and ask for the congressional medal of honor for this vet.
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When people like Jimmy Carter go to corrupt countries to monitor elections, one of the ways they tell that an election was rigged is by comparing pre-election polling to the actual outcome. When it’s drastically different, it’s rigged. The morons who voted third party in Pennsylvania and Michigan simply helped.
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Good thing I didn’t vote in PA or MI otherwise I’d be a moron!
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Have you seen “Zero days”, if you haven’t you should.
If US can get into the Iranian centrifuges then Russia getting into our voting machines would be a piece of cake!
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Even without the Russians, between voter ID and the Crosscheck system, Greg Palast has alleged that over one million voters were disenfranchised, more than enough to flip certain states and insure an Electoral College win. The Russians may well have been doing their thing, but Kris Koback and Crosscheck are pure Koch.
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My feeling about this issue. Is that our shilly-shallying about whether Trump won fairly just plays into the Putin narrative that democracy is corrupt. The path forward has to be to use impeachment law or 25th amendment to rid ourselves of this cancer on the presidency– failing that/ meanwhile, grass-roots resistance to every measure he proposess.
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Bethree,
The process takes time. Of course Putin is laughing.
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All states should vote by mail…then you can have a whole new set of problems to complain about. The teckies said that this is so far impossible to do. If it was, it would not be taking all day and even days to count ballots. How about the 5000+ illegally registered voters in Pennsylvania? My guess is that they voted heavily for Hillary.How about the x-vet with the security clearance who blabbed. I hope she is prosecuted to the max.. That is the real story here.
I have seen at least 13 different reasons given why Clinton lost. No Martians yet…that is next. Give it a rest, people.
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April
I want to see you document that 5000 + illegally registered voters . I want to see you demonstrate that they actually voted . I want to see you demonstrate why all or any of them were considered illegally registered and how or what party they were registered in .
I want to you to show me a conviction , hell an indictment of all or any of these illegally registered voters .
There have been about 40 cases of illegal voting in Philly that is over several election cycles and they did not vote in all . So it may be 5 or 10 per election .
Put up or shut up with your right wing trash
The only 5000 I can come up with was five thousand votes taken away from Trump in Wisconsin due to clerical error (or vote padding ) by the State of Wisconsin.
http://www.politicususa.com/2016/11/25/report-thousands-wisconsin-votes-trump-recount-begins.html
Document your right wing lunacy, there are Martians alright they seem to have drilled tiny holes into the heads of Republicans . Right out of a 1950s horror movie .
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My understanding is that this hack had little if anything to do with the voting machines themselves and everything to do with gathering information and resources for future a priori attacks and manipulations of the electoral system itself via the media and other information pathways that Americans use. While “(de)personalized learning is a scam, the micro targeting of individual voters and narrowly defined voter groups is VERY real, and the companies that are already doing this, Cambridge Analytica and the Palantir company are the biggest players that I know of now. Imagine the vast increase in the signal to noise ratio if the Russians pile on. When it becomes impossible for the general public to ascertain what is true from all that is not, when the signal to noise ratio gets so bad that more and more citizens simply disengage and do not vote, then those least concerned with the truth and most concerned with fear of the other and with their tribal allegiances will be the only ones voting. This is called a Kakistocracy, rule by the worst among you. The link is a brief synopsis of a much more detailed (but not so well organized) investigative report on this. It has a link to the source article. https://robertselth.com/2017/05/08/robert-mercer-cambridge-analytica-and-why-it-all-matters/
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