Caught in the act of curling up with good books to comfort herself, failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has been called back to the limelight to challenge election results that are called fishy by numerous experts in electronic voting security, defense, authoritative regimes, as well as other election authorities and activists, "in case the results could have been skewed by foreign hackers" [according to today's Guardian). Democratic electronic systems have in the recent past been tampered with by Russia's authorization if not direct action, and the Kremlin is gratified by what may be called [pace Donald Trump] a "crooked" election outcome. The hacked-into databases of Illinois and Arizona as well a those of the DNC and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta exemplify these actions, and who knows how many others?
According to some sources (including J. Alex Halderman), Clinton has only a few days to challenge Trump's victory (this Friday is Wisconsin's [one of the too-close-for-comfort swing states] deadline for such opposition to election results). But according to the U.S. Electoral College [by way of USA Today), "There is still time to audit this election-- barely. States only have until December 13 to give their final results to the Electoral College." And there is a chance Electors pledged to vote for Trump next month may switch to Hillary--so far that number is in the high teens. She'd need a total of 38 such turnabouts to win the White House, according to USA Today.
The other two crucial swing states where Trump's victory is questionable are Pennsylvania and Michigan. Clinton was confident that she'd win all three, which traditionally yield Democratic victories at the presidential level. Needless to say, nationwide polls right up until the election itself confidently predicted a Clinton victory. Halderman finds the errors here rather than attributing Trump's victory to a cyberattack, but only an audit will determine the truth, he writes.
A hearing before some congressional committees and federal authorities on the need for an audit of the presidential election results will be held early next week, "in case the results could have ben skewed by foreign hackers" [quote from today's The Guardian].
A petition calling for an audit for Election 2016 has been circulated by Verified Voting (https://www.change.org/p/demand-an-audit-of-the-2016-presidential-election) and has already amassed 140,000 signatures. Please add yours!
Activists and others have documented myriad causes that sway elections in the wrong direction: the various devices that prevent Democrats from voting, including stratagems that generate such long lines at the polls that many give up and leave while others wait for hours; pre-election devices including the cross-checking system engineered by Kansas SoS Chris Kobach that hacks into statewide computerized registration lists in order to eliminate "duplicate" fraudulent voters, which this year is said to have illegally eliminated more than a million votes, mostly Democratic; and post-election devices like discarding or destroying paper ballots that might be audited to prove the real winner of the presidency. And ineffective audits or others deemed illegal. Moreover, 25 percent of our voting machinery cannot be audited at all, that is, the DRE ("touchscreen") systems, unless "forensic analysis" is used (according to Halderman).
Some say that auditing Trump's results in states that he won will be sufficient, while others, including Halderman, advocate audits of the three crucial swing states specified above.
The first step in this arduous process is for attorneys to convince Clinton and her associates to initiate the challenge. In the midst of his attempts at a "smooth transition," President Obama has warned her against this initiative (as "the White House" urged her to concede). What are his motives? And what might be the outcome if Trump maintains his victory? If Hillary takes it back? How many people will die or have their lives ruined or suffer in either case? How many will prosper?
Having studied the four previous events where Electoral Votes deprived the presidential candidate who won the popular votes of the victory, I find that Clinton's widening lead in the popular vote, estimated to reach 2.5 million, will make history as the largest-by-far margin in this category--around 2 percent of all 130 million (and counting) votes cast, according to my calculations.
(Article changed on November 23, 2016 at 19:29)
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