So yes, inaccurate likely voter modeling is a serious problem. But it's really hard if things are changing, politically.
It's not like this is hard. We were doing paper secret ballots for literally centuries before electronic voting machines came along.
At the time I thought Clinton was a superior candidate to Trump, so I did message a Clinton campaign member my concerns and was ignored. I posted on a Clinton forum and got blocked for being a right wing troll and was told they were ahead in Arizona and competitive in Texas, so there’s no way they need to be concerned about the states I mentioned. The group think was absurd. No dissent allowed.
I bought Chasing Hillary by a NYTimes reporter and that absurd elitism and overconfidence and refusal to hear any real dissent was a recurring theme in that book. (I wouldn’t reccomend it, but the biggest lesson I learned there was the Clinton campaign played everything so safe. A dozen reviewers checking every joke, every line, every answer so every comment Hillary spoke became devoid of substance and too safe and many good plays were shot down if any of a handful of people disagreed with them).
Some people remembered and that was part of the reason many supported Stein's (Green Party candidate's) recounting effort. Unreliability and ability to hack those machines played a a significant role in the level of donations received and all the support.
> Any election where either electronic voting machines or electronic vote counting machines were used should not be trusted.
I mostly agree. At least it would remove the doubt and uncertainty and people can focus on other issues. So I would say have paper ballots, manual counting in addition to electronic, and add voter IDs on top of it. Voter IDs, if anything, just because it gets brought up every time, so fine, give everyone some of those. India somehow managed to do it but it ends being this contentious issue in this country which I don't quite understand.
> The use of either of these types of machines might explain why exit poll numbers and predictions have been so wildly off the mark in recent years.
Exactly. Even if there was no fraud, say that's the best case scenario. There were recounting efforts, allegations of every type, poll result discrepancies, articles, blogs, endless discussions on it. Just add up all the time, money and energy spent. It's just not worth it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4-wQhtRiP8
>Chimp Hacks Diebold GEMS tabulator
>Black Box Voting produced this film in Sept. 2004, teaching Baxter the chimp to delete entries in the Diebold audit log (without even a password). Yet in 2008, over 1,000 locations still used this tamper-friendly system. This is the real Diebold GEMS system, and a real Los Angeles vote database, which we ourselves altered as well to introduce "Dr. Evil." Baxter then deleted the Dr. Evil entries, to remove all traces of evidence that would show tampering of the Los Angeles election. You can download your own version of GEMS at BlackBoxVoting.org to try this yourself.
https://medium.com/@donhopkins/dumbold-voting-machine-for-th...
>Dumbold Voting Machine for The Sims 1
>At first look, it appears to be a fully functional voting machine. But it actually has a lot of infuriating bugs, hidden features, gaping security holes and malicious easter eggs that simulate problems with real voting machines, and it shows illustrated pop-ups to educate players about the real-world problems and issues of electronic voting.
Among many other problems, their touchscreen voting machines didn't count spanish language ballots.
Part of the settlement was NM had to junk all their new machines and go back to opscans.
Given the circumstantial evidence and coverups, it's entirely reasonable to assume that election integrity problems were widespread. But we'll never know, because the evidence was destroyed, often illegally (eg despite federal injunctions).
As for why non-Republicans don't talk about this: Because it's a trap. Priming the public with the idea makes it easier for someone else to come along and seize the initiative, despite any reality. And few non-Republicans know how to wield the bully pulpit.
Searching for the aforementioned case turned up another case wherein Vigil-Giron (the NM secretary of state at the time?) and several others were indited for additional shenanigans[2].
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[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140831100709/http://voteractio...
[2] https://www.abqjournal.com/14230/updated-ex-secretary-of-sta...
Wow, I didn’t know about [2]. Unbelievable. But not surprising I guess. I was friends with the Voter Action people. Their inside baseball version of the story was depressing.
This only changed once Trump won.
Then Trump vs Clinton came around, and it seems no one remembered that the easily hackable voting machines were even there. But they were. What role did they play in the election? Without a paper trail, we may never know.
Apart from the travesty that is the easily hackable electronic voting machine, there are also electronic vote counting machines. In my own district, we voted on paper ballots which where then directly placed in to electronic vote counting machines. If those are hacked they can give out any vote total the hacker wants, perhaps just outside the margin required for a manual recount.
Any election where either electronic voting machines or electronic vote counting machines were used should not be trusted. When there's no paper trail, it's even worse, but even where there is the laws might not allow a hand recount.
The use of either of these types of machines might explain why exit poll numbers and predictions have been so wildly off the mark in recent years.