turkeyfoot Posted August 20, 2016 Share Posted August 20, 2016 Im going back to my day job. I certainly appreciate the detective work youve done to dissuade me of specious conclusions. "A final sort of helpful suggestion for those properly vigilant against hanky-panky assumed or imagined or made-up -- keep your Rand Goggles On. Use the epistemological rigor of Rand's Reason Razor to help sort out contradictory information. Always assume that there is going to be a Response or Replies-To any strong allegation." Good lord, the media is a shit storm of useless information, Im drowning here. Thx for throwing a hand in my direction. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
william.scherk Posted August 21, 2016 Author Share Posted August 21, 2016 19 hours ago, turkeyfoot said: Im going back to my day job. I certainly appreciate the detective work youve done to dissuade me of specious conclusions But wait, there's more! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
william.scherk Posted August 24, 2016 Author Share Posted August 24, 2016 Here is a Tweet-link to a very interesting interactive from Reuters/Ipsos. It lets you rig the November election any way you choose. Cut up Reuters/Ipsos poll demos any which way in their new election interactive. Fun tool https://t.co/FzheN2T8E6 pic.twitter.com/TSLgTbZ22K — David Uberti (@DavidUberti) August 24, 2016 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
william.scherk Posted August 27, 2016 Author Share Posted August 27, 2016 From another thread ... 2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said: On 8/24/2016 at 11:26 AM, Peter said: My last beef on this Trump humor site is that I hope Trump will listen to legitimate pollsters... Peter, What is a legitimate pollster? Michael Here's what I heard, "All polls are wrong." Which means to me that all polls are imperfect samplings of a larger population. Some achieve a 'best in class' by virtue of transparency and accuracy/reliability. There is a letter-graded report card on public polling outfits at the Ogre's Cave. It is useful in kind of indicating things like 'house effects' ... a statistical bias for one party over another in a given House of pollster, if that kind of systematic analysis interests you. It also includes a graphical interactive table to show the 'worst in class' ... fun for wonks... My basic orientation is that most of the 2016 presidential polls right now are not useful except as a snapshot of voter intentions. And even then, we have to take our salt with the numbers. For example, what are we to make of the so-called swing-state voter intentions right now? How accurate are the most recent soundings? This requires taking a dive into its methodology and particular questions of each 'net' of catch. National numbers are not indicative of anything but a general trend crossed with volatility and noise. The most important polls may be the ones we don't see, the 'internals.' For example, Mr Trump hired several pollsters back a month or so. He elevated a quite "legitimate" pollster (Conway) to be his campaign manager. The job of that kind of insider pollster is I hope to bring the least imperfect surveys of voter intention together with strategies to reinforce, change or deepen trends where appropriate. So, I expect Conway to say to Trump, 'Survey says we are "softening" in Utah, sir. We gotta get you to Utah more. We gotta get you to North Carolina a lot more. We need you in Orlando, Miami, Jacksonville, Palm Beach County. We are going to put you where you need to be. Ya gotta trust me on this." Perhaps Mr Trump will spend less time in red states and more time in purpled blue. Maybe he will go to Pennsylvania twice a week along with Florida and Ohio, hammering himself into those TV markets and rousing all 'hiding' Trump voters to register and show up and man the local Get Out The Vote effort. All polls are wrong. But some soundings can perhaps get the gist of a more general temper: this is the kind of 'issues' message 'testing' that samples opinion to sort out winning phrases and angles and topics. This is fed into the campaign as intelligence. It is in everyone's interest that wishful thinking is set outside the executive conference room. Maybe a better question is what makes (a suite of polling) products more or less (legitimate) trustworthy? Do we need discussion here? Do we need a scoreboard or report card? Nah, it's all fixed. Bwahahaha. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted August 27, 2016 Share Posted August 27, 2016 3 hours ago, william.scherk said: Nah, it's all fixed. Bwahahaha. William, I think I read this kind of mocking of doubters coming from a Brit a few months ago about the Brexit polling. Or was that someone here in the US about the Republican primaries polling? Odd... I'm feeling the weirdest sensation of déjà vu... Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
william.scherk Posted August 29, 2016 Author Share Posted August 29, 2016 On 8/27/2016 at 4:09 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said: On 8/27/2016 at 1:04 PM, william.scherk said: My basic orientation is that most of the 2016 presidential polls right now are not useful except as a snapshot of voter intentions. And even then, we have to take our salt with the numbers. [...] Oh really? On 8/27/2016 at 4:09 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said: On 8/27/2016 at 1:04 PM, william.scherk said: [Maybe a better question is what makes (a suite of polling) products more or less (legitimate) trustworthy? Do we need discussion here? Do we need a scoreboard or report card?] Nah, it's all fixed. Bwahahaha. I think I read this kind of mocking of doubters coming from a Brit a few months ago The rejoinder to a fragment of my comment does not give readers an effective counter to the argument I make -- that today's polls are mostly non-prognostic. Your question about 'legitimate' pollsters is given some air and context in my offering, and in that space I assume we are in agreement. That is, unless you will claim that polls are ignorable on a different principle. Either way, the closer we get to the end of the electoral process the more indicative polls are likely to become, if past elections are evidence. This is likely to be your position as well, if unstated. Right now, polls tend to stoke the general over-heated hoopla that accompanies the years-long electoral ordeal. For better or worse, they claim media space and sometimes that space can be out of proportion to the actual salience, an actor in the narrative of influence, of dominant story, carrying more weight than safe. As snapshots in time, of varying accuracy in detail, they do not tell The Story. That is why I caution Red Hats to leave it to the professionals like Kellyanne Conway and Tony Fabrizio. They are not going to lie to Mr Trump, even if they discover challenging news in their researches. A modern, professional campaign needs its Intelligence Section, and modern polling provides some of that input. But I repeat myself. Thank you, Michael, for offering a way of agreeing with my major points. Meanwhile: Quote Elections security: Federal help or power grab? Some state election officials say offers to aid the fight against hackers could lead to Washington taking greater control. Quote FBI says foreign hackers penetrated state election systems Michael Isikoff Chief Investigative Correspondent August 29, 2016 The FBI has uncovered evidence that foreign hackers penetrated two state election databases in recent weeks, prompting the bureau to warn election officials across the country to take new steps to enhance the security of their computer systems, according to federal and state law enforcement officials. [...] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted August 29, 2016 Share Posted August 29, 2016 2 hours ago, william.scherk said: The rejoinder to a fragment of my comment does not give readers an effective counter to the argument I make -- that today's polls are mostly non-prognostic. William, Let me counter now. Maybe today's polls are non-prognostic in the main, but that's not the way the media plays them. Nor does the media play them prognostically. The media uses polls to influence public opinion to vote for this candidate or that. They are propaganda tools and nothing more. True? Made-up? Good methodology? Pulling numbers out of the pollster's ass? Frankly, it doesn't matter in terms of the media. Propaganda is propaganda. The media does not have interest in correct facts and truth right now. It does have an interest in plugging for one candidate or another and giving the appearance of something else. I agree that when we get close to the election, some of the polls will become more serious. But even then, they will reflect those who answer the pollsters, not necessarily how people in general will vote. Actually, I expect a bit of both down near the clutch, so I expect them to get a bit better accuracy-wise, but still not be very good. I would love to be wrong. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
william.scherk Posted August 29, 2016 Author Share Posted August 29, 2016 On 8/9/2016 at 0:43 PM, william.scherk said: If you are of the OMG It's Rigged party, or leaning that way, here is the site that might plausibly reassure you that Trump is winning ... http://longroom.com/polls/ This site is now defunct, or the dog ate its homework. Nothing there today or since I posted this screenshot. 3 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said: [Polls] are propaganda tools and nothing more. I will meet you half-way: "all polls are wrong." That leaves significant margin for discussion -- as suggested, when we are all closer in time to November 8th. For forty years in British Columbia (before and during the 20-year reign of Social Credit premier WAC Bennett), polls were outlawed. No public opinion polling could be published between the 'drop of the writ' (dissolution of the legislature) and the election. One particular 'sounding' became a stand-out, though, as measured in hamburger sales at De Dutch pancake houses (often publicized at an annual exhibition in Vancouver). The Hamburger Poll gained a reputation for accuracy, of course -- being the only game in town -- and was even among the predictive polling in our last few provincial elections. The only polls I advise paying real attention to right now are those that cover purpley-blueish-rouge: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, and Iowa. Here is a 270toWin frolic -- informed by nothing more than propaganda. It assumes that Clinton can pull off a squeaker in Pennsylvania and Florida: Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted August 30, 2016 Share Posted August 30, 2016 7 hours ago, william.scherk said: I will meet you half-way: "all polls are wrong." William, That is not halfway. I don't agree with this. Not at all. In my marketing studies, split testing is done all the time and that is a form of polling. A very accurate form of polling in fact. For a quick and easy example, people make oodles of money split-testing, say, parts of sales letters. This means one viewer sees Part A, the next viewer Part B, the next Part A, the next Part B and so on. And the marketers track specific behaviors of these viewers. Then, sales-letter-wise, they keep the higher performing option and discard the lower performing one. After they are convinced that enough of that particular poll has been sufficient to reflect reality, they make the change to the sales letter and start polling (split-testing) the next part. Marketers do this with all kinds of things, not just sales letters. The Internet is a wonderful place to carry this out, too, because of the ridiculously low cost and the high number of people to poll one can access. The entire new field of growth hacking is based on controlled polling like this. And the large number of billionaires in Silicon Valley are all the proof anyone needs to show that it is accurate and it works, meaning it results in extreme predictive success. As to political polling, I can see how it could be made to become accurate, but not in today's political environment. If you look at the way I write about this, I always qualify my comments on polls by saying something like: today's polling, or, the way the media uses it. That should not be interpreted to mean "all polling" everywhere, forever and and ever amen. If there is a predominance of thieves in a place who only get money by stealing it, that does not mean the only way to get money anywhere for all time is by stealing it. Likewise, merely because almost all modern political pollsters and political media for this election are manipulative assholes, that doesn't mean manipulative assholeness is a fundamental part of political polling or political media. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
william.scherk Posted September 5, 2016 Author Share Posted September 5, 2016 On 8/29/2016 at 11:48 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said: The entire new field of growth hacking is based on controlled polling Growth Hacking. Quote As to political polling, I can see how it could be made to become accurate, but not in today's political environment. How? I have thought that accuracy, validity and reliability are measurable against a standard -- the performance in the 'real' polling. So in the primaries, we can sort of figure out who are the better or worse pollsters in the actual races they 'sampled.' How did Pollster X on the California primary do against the final tallies -- and so on. Not all polls are defective in the same ways. I noted before that you were ambivalent toward polls -- 'when pollsters stop trying to predict what happens and try to use polls to manipulate public opinion.' Quote I always qualify my comments on polls by saying something like: today's polling, or, the way the media uses it. Polls "are propaganda tools and nothing more." Or, ten pages of returns on the search items 'polls or polling or pollsters or poll.' Quote [M]erely because almost all modern political pollsters and political media for this election are manipulative assholes, that doesn't mean manipulative assholeness is a fundamental part of political polling or political media. Is Kellyanne Conway a manipulative asshole -- as a pollster? How about Tony Fabrizio? Anyway, your argument here assumes that almost all ... are manipulative assholes. That is an important distinction to make -- that some are not manipulative assholes. That some remnant are going to be more accurate or reliable to some degree than the others in the majority. On general, background issues, we probably agree that the entire industry of political polling has implications for marketing and persuasion in allied fields, according to consumption, and that self-generated polling serves a media outlet's interests first, (via say a FoxNews or CNN or NBC or Drudge or whomever). Polling -- and more generally public opinion surveys and sampling -- often serves first to give the chattering classes, pundits and ancillary media something to chatter about, something tractable for the bobbleheads. All the metaphorical 'horse race' attributes of political campaigns tend to distort or outweigh more important stories by making polling the central thread. We will differ in some insubstantial ways, I think, on semantics. I figure our battling pithy one-liners are cousins: All polls are wrong ... polls are propaganda tools and nothing more. Halfway between Nothing But Propaganda and All Wrong is a long essay. Maybe I will get around to it in the immediate aftermath of the election. I don't take much away from your remarks here but a revulsion for asshole-ism which you attach to a manipulative media, a Blob In my take-away, the revulsion for inaccurate or unreliable asshole survey Blob extends across the field entire. That leaves you with gumption, gut feelings and other estimations. Here is an interesting snippet from Candidate Trump, snatched out of the Endless Love thread, via the Link-Averse Peter: 4 hours ago, Donald J Trump said: Well, Friend, with your help today, the next time I’m being interviewed, I will have my own poll that shows that the American people disagree with the dishonest media! The fund-raiser note is from August 15th and has already made a splash in eek the media. He maybe needed money to get some polling done that he can haul out showing that Media X Rigged Poll on Issue Y is wrong. He will have his own poll. That should be fun for all. I think we can agree in advance that we won't be able to validate this polling easily. Here is the rest of the note, including its embedded link to a Survey! When you finish the survey you can finally donate a little bit**. The survey is fun and easy. Monday, August 15, 2016 Donald Trump: "We now have TWO opponents" Friend, We're not just fighting against Hillary Clinton…We are running against the very dishonest and totally biased media! It's time to hold the media accountable for trying to rig this election against us.Please take the Mainstream Media Accountability Survey right now and help me spread the truth about our movement. All too often I'm asked about a "poll" put out by a liberal organization that says the American people disagree with our common-sense reforms to fix our country. Well, Friend, with your help today, the next time I'm being interviewed, I will have my own poll that shows that the American people disagree with the dishonest media! TAKE THE SURVEY NOW Since Day ONE, the media has written off this campaign. They said we were doomed. But together, you and I proved the pundits wrong and ended up getting more votes than ANY Republican candidate in the history of our Party.And you know what?Every time I see one more biased report from the dishonest media, I'm reminded that we're on the RIGHT side of this fight. Hillary Clinton STILL can't admit that she lied about sending classified top-secret emails and that she deleted 3O,OOO to cover her tracks. Can you imagine if I set up a secret server, stored top secret information on it, jeopardized our national security, deleted 3O,OOO records, LIED about it, and then used the defense that my brain "short-circuited"? The media would single-handedly destroy our campaign! I've always known that the media was out to get Republicans. But this campaign has opened my eyes to how truly biased and dishonest they are. We cannot let the media get away with it. We MUST fight back.Please make it your priority today to take the Mainstream Media Accountability Survey. Thank you, Donald J. Trump ____________________ ** Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BaalChatzaf Posted September 5, 2016 Share Posted September 5, 2016 On 8/29/2016 at 7:35 PM, william.scherk said: Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com If it comes out like this, the Wicked Witch of Wellesly will not be able to claim a mandate.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
william.scherk Posted September 5, 2016 Author Share Posted September 5, 2016 (edited) 26 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said: On 8/29/2016 at 4:35 PM, william.scherk said: Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com If it comes out like this, the Wicked Witch of Wellesly will not be able to claim a mandate.... Nice aspect of your American republican system, mandates. She would presumably still have the power to make policy and enforce it in her cabinet. And she would have the mandate of being Commander. I think you mean she will be hobbled by a razor-thin margin. That could well be true. Look how hobbled George W Bush was in his first term after his relative squeaker with Gore. Here's a semi-realistic pretend map for a Trump win of equally squeaky margin. Does he get to claim a Mandate? -- More fun at 270toWin.com: Quote Electoral College Tie Finder While unlikely, a 269-269 electoral college tie is not out of the question in a competitive 2016 presidential election. We've written previously about what happens if there's a tie in the electoral college. On this page, we start with the 32 tie combinations that are possible given this battleground map. To make things more interesting, you can also adjust one electoral vote each in Maine & Nebraska, reflecting more competitive 2nd District in both of those states. To Use: Select a state below to choose a party winner. As you allocate states to Democrats or Republicans, the remaining electoral tie combinations will display. Democrat 268 Republican 270 No ties remain. Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com Edited September 5, 2016 by william.scherk More fun at 270toWin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted September 5, 2016 Share Posted September 5, 2016 2 hours ago, william.scherk said: I figure our battling pithy one-liners are cousins: All polls are wrong ... polls are propaganda tools and nothing more. Halfway between Nothing But Propaganda and All Wrong is a long essay. William, You keep going off into gotcha-like tangents and keep missing the big picture. (I can almost hear you thinking: ALL pollsters, Michael? Let me falsify that with just one to discredit your entire idea. ) But you keep boiling your argument down to the equivalent of: "Can you prove that the thief with the sudden windfall actually stole the merchandise?" Maybe one can't prove it until one can, but "innocent until proven guilty" doesn't mean an obligation to give a vote of confidence to the sleazebag in an election. An election is not a court of law. Having a reputation as a sleazebag is not a good resumé item. People are free to vote as they perceive, not on the basis of some semantic technicality or other. But to point: here is one way polls are used as propaganda. I mean mainstream polls and I also mean both Republican and Democratic bad guys. They use polls for falsifying elections through propaganda. This has almost become a habit in modern elections--once again, both parties. And it makes me believe solidly in the elites controlling both parties as if they were one. (For both Democratic and Republican elites, they are perfectly happy to let the hoi polloi cattle fight over minor issues like social injustice or abortion or whatever, just so long as their endless war machine, globalism and government growth are unaffected.) Falsifying an election is different than wholesale voter fraud. It's more subtle. It works like this. Step 1 - Make sure polls are skewed toward the candidate you want to win the election and make sure they stay skewed for a reasonable enough time for the public to become habituated to that impression. Step 2 - Use the dark arts on voting machines and other voting facilities so that they align with these polls. Voila. You don't need dead people voting and all that obvious stuff. Often just a nudge or two in disqualifying the right voters in the algorithm works. The line-up between skewed polls and skewed election results gives your candidate the air of legitimacy. Notice that Reuters and other main polling agencies have been busted recently with skewed methodology (polling more Democrats than Republicans or not polling undecideds and so on). And they keep getting busted. Why do you think they're doing it? Just to suck up to Hillary Clinton? Heh. It's because they have an impression to convey that Clinton is winning--that is, unless their biased results become so obvious to the public that they can no longer influence public perception. Then they have to act right for awhile before trying again. If they cannot have a minimum of credibility with the public, the dark arts folks can't do their voter results magic because they no longer have polling cover to claim legitimacy... To use the nifty Wikiquotes as a source for a Josef Stalin quote (see here): Quote I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how. btw - To answer your question, when Kellyanne Conway and Tony Fabrizio act as a pollsters, sure, they most definitely are propagandists. In my view, being a propagandist is part of the job description of modern pollsters. Who knows? Trump's pollsters might even do some actual innocent polling while they're at it, but I doubt it. Maybe for inhouse purposes, for their own information so to speak... The fact is, given the sheer corruption of the establishment press, the pundits, the news agencies and the polling agencies, Trump's pollsters don't have to do too much in the dirty tricks department. The establishment is doing their work for them by committing suicide. The public is turning off to the establishment because they took their monkeyshines too far. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
william.scherk Posted September 6, 2016 Author Share Posted September 6, 2016 19 hours ago, william.scherk said: Our fearless leader said said: As to political polling, I can see how it could be made to become accurate, but not in today's political environment. How? My argument did not survive truncation and analogy, so I leave this pending. I am going to set aside "but not in today's political environment" as a perpetual offramp. What interests me is that Michael and I agree that there is a standard -- a gold standard -- but not how to apply it to particulars. So, there is an in general question for the crowds on the OL Front Porch. How can 'political polling' be (made to become) accurate? As for a Grand Unified Plot that involves multiple layers of chicanery and black-box crimes at thousands of precincts and the entire staff of all (most) pollsters and the Democratic forces and a larger "Them" on top of it all ... I am not yet persuaded. An extraordinarily large and complex operation like this requires some ordinary evidence. Wait, I need to truncate and analogize ... 16 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said: Trump's pollsters might even do some actual innocent polling while they're at it, but I doubt it. They will serve The Boss. If there are professional standards of 'innocence' to mark out an okay-ish pollster, what must it be like when you realize The Boss doesn't want The Truth ... as derived from your work on assessing public opinion in the huge nation that is America. It's like taking depth-soundings or like taking samples from a body of water. It is like mapping opinion and concern, assessing the depth of love or hate, like charting the differences in the great In Between. Heading to Youngstown, Ohio now- some great polls. #AmericaFirst pic.twitter.com/cGwDLSOFUt — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2016 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Posted September 6, 2016 Share Posted September 6, 2016 I do think there are people who will not “admit” to a pollster that they will vote for Trump, but not a vast, silent majority. Trump makes it difficult because you may be voting for him but you always need to say, no, he was not my first choice, or I don’t always agree with him but, or what he said was wrong, but . . .yada yada yada. And a yard sign for Trump might invite vandalism, though the violence I expected at Trump rallies has not happened. Larry Sabato poly sci guy from UVA said on Fox that Trump only has two narrow paths to electoral college victory even though he is narrowing the gap with the popular vote. Clinton easily has eight paths to victory. Peter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
william.scherk Posted September 9, 2016 Author Share Posted September 9, 2016 On 8/7/2016 at 4:34 PM, william.scherk said: I start with this kind of interim finding: the estimable effect of 'fraud' in 2012 was minute at best. The least efficient fraudulent endeavor is voter-impersonation or 'double-voting.' The most effective means would be corrupting a paper-trail-less machinery set-up in its innards, where audits cannot easily find the corruption. This would likely only be local and also manpower-heavy, so would need the silent collusion of a large number of people, and the evasion of procedures to check just such a corruption at each step of hierarchy of reporting. In the aftermath of a stinky vote, there are still tools to detect skews and irregularities statistically, to isolate for investigation 'cases' of possible criminal tinkering and tampering. Has any OLer signed up to be a Poll-Watcher for the Trump campaign? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted September 10, 2016 Share Posted September 10, 2016 10 hours ago, william.scherk said: Has any OLer signed up to be a Poll-Watcher for the Trump campaign? Not me, but I probably will closer to the election. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
william.scherk Posted September 10, 2016 Author Share Posted September 10, 2016 17 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said: On 9/9/2016 at 10:39 AM, william.scherk said: Has any OLer signed up to be a Poll-Watcher for the Trump campaign? Not me, but I probably will closer to the election. I trained and got paid to be an election worker in our last provincial election. Wildly different from Cook County. But I have been looking into the difference between poll worker, election observer and poll watcher. I think the most fun of the three would be to work as the actual honcho in the precinct -- the Election Judge. Or, with a bit of tech savvy, make twice as much coin and the person in charge of all the machinery. Second choice would be the Election Observer inside the polls checking along with every name ticked off and every ballot given. Even sending this information back to HQ for the final "get those stragglers to the polls." The 'watchers' seem to be people who (in your jurisdiction) watch outside the polls, and don't really have much to do. Here's a video in case you want the more fun, more rewarding job: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
william.scherk Posted October 21, 2016 Author Share Posted October 21, 2016 So, where are we at in our understanding of all the ways an election contest can be fiddled with? Which are the clear and present dangers, and what has the GOP and the Trump campaign done to investigate and commit resources to problem areas? As I noted above, there are some ten thousand individual entities which organize for and 'certify' elections. They are like bricks in the electoral edifice, chunked state by state, and then further diversified at county and municipal level. On down to the precinct level, these are the 'stage managers' of the entire complicated process we call The Election. I have approached this lately with a fairly loose standard of evidence, seeking strong or telling examples, delving into exemplar counties and precinct poll-watcher rules and procedure, including integrity checks, seeking information from individual county election boards all the way up to the state secretary elections officials, at which level legal responsibilities end. I won't repeat my explanations of good sites and good tools for exploring individual county-by-county differences in procedure, machinery and oversight. I expect those interested have already researched their own state and county systems, exploring the voting machines and reporting processes, their vulnerabilities if any, checking the rules for local precinct poll-watching and scrutineering. The thing I want to underline is that the 'system' is knowable, and there is expertise and experience in each local polling place. Systems are universally set in place such that each party on the ballot, each candidate on the ballot, as well as each party on the ballot -- each of these interests has a place inside the polling place, at the table, able to inspect and audit in real-time the entire day of voting, and able to inspect, observe and report on each step of the tabulation, including the processes by which votes are taken from electronic voting machines and transported to central tabulation centres (or local variant). -- I did a deep dive into the rules and regs and processes in Cook County, Illinois and a couple others in different states. I expect people who fear or expect chicanery to have a working knowledge of the local process, and if not particularly impressed by the level of scrutiny already in place officially, to apply for credentials to be a further line of observation (either inside or outside the polls) with a particular campaign. Further up in this thread, I gave a link to and an excerpt from a document prepared by the Obama campaign that showed just what effort they had put into their 'poll-watching.' Anyway, that is a brief-for-me sketch of how I have mentally prepared for reports and claims of chicanery. If, for example, I fear that some supposedly 'safe' swing states will be somehow incrementally by a thousand small nudges turned the 'wrong way' ... I will be able to drill down into the particulars. Which state/s, which counties, which precincts, which kinds of chicanery? Who is in charge? Off the top of my head, I think we could get a team together here to give a final good look at integrity in elections in Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Ohio and maybe a couple more. Back to that Wikipedia list . On 8/2/2016 at 10:41 AM, william.scherk said: 1.1Electorate manipulation 1.1.1Manipulation of demography 1.1.2Disenfranchisement 1.1.3Division of opposition support 1.2Intimidation 1.3Vote buying 1.4Misinformation 1.5Misleading or confusing ballot papers 1.6Ballot stuffing 1.7Misrecording of votes 1.8Misuse of proxy votes 1.9Destruction or invalidation of ballots 1.10Tampering with electronic voting machines 1.11Voter impersonation 1.12Artificial results I am going to give this list another combing over, and extract from it some Watch Spots tied to actual places, actual processes, actual trepidation. One thing I want to mention is that the Trump campaign itself has been notably unspecific and unhelpful. There is no correlate to the "Obama Watcher" document that spells out what a volunteer can do, let a lone a coherent state-by-state by Watch Spots plan. There is nothing on the website to guide the person who takes the Spectre seriously -- in the sense of orienting him or her, and then matching him or her to a Watch Spot. There is no advanced organization that I can perceive at this time. Quote Maybe there will be some detail from the campaign that helps 'election auditors' zero in on the likeliest fraudulent mechanisms, at the particular weak areas. An effective warning can help prevent fraud and chicanery. Yeah. No. I will ring this bell again. On 8/6/2016 at 11:44 AM, william.scherk said: As I suggested to readers earlier -- to be vigilant, you need to be vigilant against particular efforts to disrupt accurate vote-counting, or specific weaknesses that can be exploited in tabulation. It pays to be familiar with eg, local election regimes -- at your own level is the place to do your part (as Mr Gingrich suggested). The party can hire the lawyers, the campaigns can put paid and volunteer staff at each level as scrutineers. Here it pays to scope out the field for obvious weak spots and infirmities. I had a thought today that Mr Trump's coy, suspenseful play-acting around a concession speech is ultimately meaningless. At some point on the evening of the election, the election will be 'called.' Some outfits will 'call' it way early based on exit polls collected in the eastern states. They will 'project' electoral vote results in crucial states before the rest of the country gets its thumb in. These will be harbingers. Later in the night, the actual reported totals from the hundreds of thousands of precincts will have been transmitted to state officials, and the tabulating will have come close to the 95% counted mark. At around that time, the writing is on the wall, and the leading candidate can pick out their victory suit and edit the points of their expected speech to the nation. First, however, the candidate in second place will speak. At least, that has been the tradition. Loser goes first. I expect that if Mrs Clinton goes first as the loser, she will concede. With some predictable 'the people have spoken' bumf. So too a Trump loser speech will be predictable. It might come a bit later in the event and Mrs Clinton might have to be injected a few more times before it comes, but Trump will have by then conferred with all his brain trust and his family and his campaign leadership, taken temperature. Giuliani will be there, Ivanka, Melania, (maybe not the Rogers) and Kellyanne and Bannon and Don Jr and Eric and the wives and the other folks in the inner circle. They will be giving him advice and encouragement. Such persons in charge of the Trump efforts to Poll-Watch will deliver their reports. The 'results' of these objective reports of chicanery-or-not will influence what their advice is. I expect that in such circumstances -- as his objective staff delivers him their judgment and his family and friends look to history -- Mr Trump will concede. (on second thought ...) 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Michael Stuart Kelly Posted October 21, 2016 Share Posted October 21, 2016 btw - I cannot be a poll watcher. I got called for jury duty on Nov. 8. I'm going to have to show up at 6:00 AM to vote if I want to vote on Nov. 8. And I'm going to be tied up almost all day with this stuff. So no poll watching. Living around Chicago is a pisser. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
william.scherk Posted October 22, 2016 Author Share Posted October 22, 2016 What is this show of force distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack which is news of the moment? How on earth did Wikileaks find itself in the position of asking its supporters to not do DDOS things? I mean, does it qualify as chicanery or skullduggery if Wikileaks gets attached to this attack? Is theirs a veiled threat against Global Clinton Inc that there are disruptions to come? If there is the least whiff of Russian-axis assfingers on this, it becomes capital, political capital. Who is going to exploit the notion that Wikileaks can 'influence' the election? I hope there is no smirking from the Trump team. There is a stain attached to this that can run up the arms of all who touch it. Me, I have plodded through a few aisles, fridges and bottle racks of the Podesta leaks. There is no spine to this story, just blobs of exactly what you would expect, boring backstage campaigny bullshit, horse-trading, decision-taking, trial balloons, RSVPs, lists, notions, feather and sparkles. Scratch those last two, I drifted off. This is like a big log larger by kilometre than your average fireplace. It needs processing, milling, chipping, added sugar and sparkles.. It is too much raw, uncurated boring email morgue.. It doesn't catch anyone will their pants down at the milking-machine. On another note of How To Make Friends and Influence People, lesson 24: always try to include other kids in the playground in your fun, including a First Spouse. That's right, Donald, take an air-punch or two at Bill's Penis Media and at the same time blame Michelle Obama for starting the whole dang nasty thing. That accomplishes so much campaign magic at one time, they will be writing it up in the big book of Memories. Whoah. Drifted off again. I thought for a minute Trump had said "she started it" about Mrs Obama and Bill's Penis. Shake my head. What idiot candidate would try to score a dick rebound off a popular First Lady? Whew. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Letendre Posted October 22, 2016 Share Posted October 22, 2016 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-idUSKCN12L1UI "Trump gains on Clinton, poll shows 'rigged' message resonates" "[...] Trump gained on his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton among American voters this week, cutting her lead nearly in half, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling released on Friday." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Letendre Posted October 22, 2016 Share Posted October 22, 2016 The Democrats cheated Bernie and they will try to cheat Trump. http://projectveritasaction.com/rigging-election-video-ii-mass-voter-fraud.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted October 22, 2016 Share Posted October 22, 2016 1 hour ago, william.scherk said: What is this show of force distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack which is news of the moment? How on earth did Wikileaks find itself in the position of asking its supporters to not do DDOS things? William, It was probably to show the Clintons & crew that there are people other than Russians who have the capability to hack into stuff if they get pissed enough. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Letendre Posted October 22, 2016 Share Posted October 22, 2016 From WikiLeaks six hours ago: 6h6 hours ago WikiLeaks @wikileaks The Obama administration should not have attempted to misuse its instruments of state to stop criticism of its ruling party candidate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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