Brad Friedman: Why To Be Suspicious Of Every Election

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21

This is the case that Brad talked about from South Carolina. It is so preposterous that it must have been done as a mean-spirited joke just to demonstrate how blatant ‘they’ could be.
I can easily imagine a pair of elderly southern party bosses exchanging a dollar as one exclaims to the other, “You were right Mortimer, we could secure the party nomination for a complete nobody and get away with it!”

The Alvin Greene Case – South Carolina 2010

SHOCKING UPSET

An unknown deadbeat, Alvin Greene, defeated a successful public servant, Vic Rawl, by an enormous margin of 18 percent in the 2010 South Carolina Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate.

UNQUALIFIED PATSY

Alvin Greene was facing obscenity charges for showing pornography to a woman in a college computer lab. He had recently been kicked out of the military. He was unemployed.

Despite his lack of qualifications and income he spent $10,000 filing to run for senator. When Greene asked for a public defender in the obscenity case, many questioned how he had acquired the cash [to file for the election]. There was speculation that he was a Republican plant.

Greene was unaffiliated with local Democrats. His campaign was nonexistent—no website, no yard sign, no public appearances, no fundraising, no advertisements.

CAREER PUBLIC SERVANT

Yet the voting machines showed Greene defeating former judge and four-term state legislator Vic Rawl by 30,000 votes.

Rawl was on the Charleston County Council. He was a respected community leader. He ran an active campaign with hundreds of volunteers. How could he have lost?

STATISTICAL EVIDENCE OF RIGGING

Hand-counted paper absentee ballots showed opposite results compared to electronic voting. Rawl won many of those votes—often by a large margin, a complete flip of what Greene had won on the voting machines.

According to Rawl's campaign manager Walter Ludwig, half of South Carolina's counties had a disparity between absentee and election day votes greater than 10 points. Spartanburg County was rife with anomalies: precincts where Greene received more votes than were actually cast, and precincts where votes appeared to be missing. Rarely did the vote totals match.

Ludwig also reported that a similar discrepancy between absentee and electronic votes "didn't happen in any other races on the ballot."

NO ACCOUNTABILITY

South Carolina is particularly vulnerable to fraudulent results because the entire state uses touchscreen voting machines made by Election Systems & Software. The iVotronic leaves no paper trail, making it impossible to verify elections for accuracy.

A security analysis by the University of Pennsylvania found “numerous exploitable vulnerabilities in nearly every component of the ES&S system.” These vulnerabilities open the voting machines to attacks that could “alter or forge precinct results, install corrupt firmware, and erase audit records.”

STRATEGIC RIGGING

Manipulating a low-attention primary to produce a weak opponent is a subtle way to rig a general election. Was Alvin Greene a legitimate candidate or an unqualified patsy set up for an untraceable electronic rig?

Greene ran in a subsequent election for the state legislature and won a mere 37 votes.

WHO BENEFITED

Jim DeMint and his right-wing backers were the ultimate beneficiaries of Alvin Greene’s implausible victory in the Democratic Senate primary.

DeMint sailed to victory with a massive margin over Greene, allowing his radical views to influence the U.S. Senate—no right to abortion in cases of rape, no gay civil rights, erosion of public health care, and weakening of Social Security.

DeMint later left the Senate to head an ultraconservative group that pushes oppressive voter ID regulations.

So the summary here is that an unemployed, poorly funded, criminally indicted man with no campaign website and no campaign staff managed to somehow defeat a well-liked, well-respected, well-funded and well-staffed adversary.

By 18 points!!

But only in the electronic machine results…the hand-counted paper ballots showed the exact opposite result.

Then this derelict loner was easily trounced in the general election by the Tea Party candidate Jim DeMint…so the summary here is not that Alvin Greene pulled off this stunning feat of election rigging, he was an obvious patsy in the charade.

The real mystery is how such obvious cases go utterly unchallenged. Where’s the accountability?

I also offer such cases as definitive proof against those who make the argument that “large conspiracies cannot exist because somebody would talk.”

That’s just not true. Such conspiracies happen all the time and the US election rigging is about as obvious an area as one could hope to study. Means, motive, opportunity…and reams and reams of statistical evidence that, to me, is ironclad.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but three times is enemy action.

Note that the machines in use in South carolina were made by ES&S, the same company that Chuck Hagel 'left' prior to winning his own massive 18 point 'upset' in Oklahoma.

What is it about 18 to these guys?  Just a vote rigging bug or is that some sort of wink from the bad guys to those in the know?

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Seems like the action resulted in Jim DeMint more or less running unopposed in the general.  Cui Bono = Jim DeMint.
Could also have been a signal to someone else.  "Watch what happens in Carolina.  If you don't play ball, this could happen to you at the next election, regardless of how much funding you get."

Personally, I think people just don't understand.  I certainly didn't, not until this podcast.  In my case I was just assuming everything was under control because "there are people watching over the process."

Except, there aren't.

Or maybe there were people watching, and if they didn't play dumb, they ended up having an accident.

Certainly these two cases seem pretty egregious.

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No, we don't… just add the non voters as voters… Unpleasantly surprised in 1991 when I came to vote around 7:00PM, I have been told that I have already voted… my wife too. They did not even wait until the closure time (8:00PM). They closed right after that and started the manual counting. Of course, the unshaved bearded guy with flops won the seat… No idea how they managed to keep the observers silent… may be with the help of a promise of a knife and a shroud? I don't know.
Low tech cheating, but it did work. Different place. Different context. Different time. Same goal. Same motivation. Same humans. We are a very special species. wink

Going beyond democracy and elections, I see all these shenanigans as usual tricks to obtain what some people wants. We are conditioned for centuries to believe in justice, honesty, hard work. But look at what the Catholic church did during centuries, what Egyptian dynasties did for millennia, what the roman empire did, etc… keep alive alive some nice concepts within the populace to stay calm and quiet, while doing the real work behind curtains. This is only during shrinking pie times that things are more visible because different groups in power fight for the smaller prize. That's it. Manipulative charmer techniques until he unmasks.

We have got a partial election two weeks ago in our municipality to elect a new mayor. Everything was manual and the process, although a tad protocol heavy, seems to be clean. 

 

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As I listened to the intro to this podcast, it was stated the Brad Friedman was not Partisan. However, during the first 10 minutes he bashed Bush and the republican party continually.  Obviously it is fine for him to have this opinion, but he should not have been presented as having a non Partisan agenda.  Clearly he did!

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Mr. Martenson,
I have been a member of your website since 2009.  I am an avid fan and follower of your analysis. 

Having said that, I am very disappointed at the "Conservative bashing" that has occurred as a result of the this podcast.  Surprisingly, your participated in this bashing via the article you posted

You certainly have the right to do it, However, I thought that this site was above political finger pointing and bashing of individual beliefs. 

I am hoping this is just an odd occurance.

Respectfully,

Mike Sullivan

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Voting has always been rigged.  It is why TPTB will NOT allow computer voting using anonymous verified token.

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Mike, I have no idea what you are talking about.

If by "conservative bashing" you mean pointing out highly suspect election results that happened to be undertaken by a GOP and Tea Party candidates then we have a very different view of the world.  I wouldn't care if it was my own mother that turned in those dodgy results, I'd still be using them as an example of what's wrong.

In your view is it "bashing" to use data and evidence to call into question an election result?

Not in my world.  If you have different evidence, please trot it/them out.  If you want to balance things by putting forward examples of election rigging by "non-conservatives" then please feel free.  But I am not here to support or refute your chosen party affiliations.  Not my job.

However, just to show that I am an equal opportunity basher, and proudly if not sadly so, here's another one to chew on.

In a fair election there should be no drift in the vote percentage line for a candidate when plotted as a function of the cumulative size of the precincts.  An important research paper by Choquette and  Johnson in 2012 demonstrated the sophistication of the current election riggers by noting that:

Historically, we found no significant correlation between precinct vote tally and the percentage success for each candidate. In other words, for most counties and states, the vote result is unrelated to the number of voters in a precinct. There are random variations between precincts, but no definite linear trend from small to large precincts.
In other words, the size of a given precinct should add no 'trending' effects to votes.  Small ones behave like large ones and any differences they do have are scattered about a mean.

Here's what a fair election looks like:

(Source - Choquette and Johnson)

The "cumulative vote tally" refers to the fact that the precincts are arranged by size, smallest to the left, and then each precinct's results are added to the one prior giving a cumulative tally.

Prior to electronic vote machines these lines all pretty much were flat like the ones above.

But then crazy results started to pour in.

Like this one:

Ooops.  That one shows another GOP act of rigging, although it did favor Romney in the primary at the expense of other conservatives, so perhaps that one will be conflicting to a conservative partisan.

But here's a recent example I dug up the other day from the other side of the aisle:

If you go to the paper by Choquette and Johnson you can see example after example of perfectly free and fair flat lines.  

Now the rigging is so pervasive they are hard to find in the major elections and instead of questioning the elections the response has been to drop exit polling because, apparently, it no longer works.  Go figure.  

But, yes, the GOP side has many, many more examples to choose from and I really really doubt that it's merely a coincidence that the major makers of the election machines are all owned by conservatives.  

However, as demonstrated above by the NY Clinton/Sanders results, the DNC is catching up.

 

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These graphs you are showing just kill my 'faith' in anything like a 'fair' election.  That's some of the strangest curves centering to a mean with more data counts…  Unbelievable to me.    
I have collected data in X-ray stuff almost every day for somewhere close to 20 years in my 40 years in life and data like that just makes my head spin, it can't be accurate can it?  My brain screams 'bad' or 'compromised' data.  I am trying to think of all the ways you could reasonably get curves that move up like that on getting to a mean value.  The last graph, people that vote for Hillary like to vote at the end of the day by close to 20% margined over Sander's voters? Really? Why?   What demographics could drive that?  It looks like to me the temperature of the voting booth is drifting over time and voters vote differently at different temperatures (says my left brain BS story maker…)  

 

That data is just really faith killing, " the game is rigged" seems to be a very viable option. 

  

Thanks for sharing (So where is Santa Claus exactly?)

   

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People still trapped in the left-right thing tend to see things through that lens.  Wedge issues, prayer in schools, etc.  Deep State is perfectly happy with that outcome.  As long as the "representatives" realize they could lose the next election regardless of popularity or funding, they will stay in line.
Computer security is hard to do right.  Microsoft is trying hard to eliminate bugs, but buying a zero-day back door into a Windows box costs about $100k.  And once you own the box, you can do a whole lot of things.

Failiing this, you can co-opt and/or corrupt (or plant) an engineer at the voting-machine company to write a back door for you.  You don't even have to be the owner.  (If you ARE the owner, its even easier).  And then the engineer can have an accident afterwards.  And then you own those boxes in perpetuity.  Call it a million dollar project, maybe two.  Its a lot cheaper than buying ad time.  A secretive super-pac could fund this easily.

Unlike some massive nationwide conspiracy, doing this right would require only a small number of people.  That's one of the virtues of tech.  It can scale up with automation.  And blabbermouths have plane accidents.

If you could read the Snowden releases the way I can, given what the NSA has been able to accomplish, stealing elections is just not even hard.  I mean, NSA has perfected the MITM attack by having their servers respond faster than the actual servers.

I get periodic updates from the Secret Service about the very latest (ordinary) electronic financial crimes.  They are pretty sophisticated.  Nothing like the Snowden stuff, but still reasonably slick.

Again.  Stealing an election electronically seems easier to me than stealing money.  Or at least, its on the same order of difficulty.  And with no audit trail, nobody really even "knows" if the election was stolen.  Its all just statistics which is not the same as someone standing up and saying "MY BANK ACCOUNT WAS DRAINED."

 

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(voting) they wouldn't let us do it?  

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reflector,
You can choose not to vote. You have that choice. That choice will be one back of the second worst choice - to actually vote. You said that government is barbarism. I agree with that. I don't agree that taking a stand by not voting accomplishes your objective.

Governments come about to provide services. That is their reason to exist. Whether it is common defense, championing the rights of the individual, or any other laudable goals … without a government to protect and promote those ideals, they wither and die. Others who have banded into governments (or gangs, if you prefer) will use their power to take what is yours. Call it eminent domain.

Look at history and point out any time that anarchy reigned. If it did reign supreme, why isn't it the preferred model today? Humans like rules and they need rules in order to cheat. We want the rules to apply to others, not ourselves. We need an organization that is powerful enough to provide a semblance of power. That is why we always form governments.

For right or wrong, our system of government requires its citizens to choose its "leaders." The one with the most votes gets the nod. Your approach to willfully not vote is exactly as useful as someone who is too lazy to be bothered. If you want to make a statement, write in "None of the above" for any/all office(s) on your ballot. At least, your protest will have to be acknowledged by the election committee. If enough people do so, it may get mentioned by someone on TV. Isn't that how thoughts go viral in our modern age?

I'm all for limited government. Apparently, most folks aren't. How can I hope to affect change if I don't vote?

Grover

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By all means, keep voting.

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Arguably, Grover's decision to vote will have a similar impact on society as your repeated posting of the WTC-7 tower collapse video.  Certainly its in the same order of magnitude anyway.  And his action certainly doesn't hurt anyone.  That's a plus.
I have the sense that each of us here each are doing what we think is right, to the extent that we feel we have the capacity.  Many of us here think the other guy is just being silly.

Ah, the irony.

 

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After 2 world wars, milliions murdered and killed, billions spent with decades of planning and implementation to bring the EU super state to fruition for the benefit of the usual men in suits…and the UK plebs now get to vote to stay in or leave this corrupt institution, that we were never given a say in the implementation of, in the first place! 
It all looks like an agenda to dupe the people over here into believing that they had a chance to leave, but the vote indicated that they decided to stay instead! A massive fraudulant rouse and divide and conquer tactic if ever I saw one!

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grover,

i don't have the right to vote, i don't have the right to support people who would impose my will and my ideas on others. i will not participate in a sham and a fraud.

i will not take, what is not mine to take.

setting a correct example is the highest choice one can make.

clearly, governments did not come about to provide services. governments came about when one caveman had a larger club and more muscle than the other cavemen, and found that he could take their food and their women and claim ownership of territory.

even today, the so-called "services" government provides are nothing more than a re-distribution of wealth, government does not produce anything. anything the government does, we could have done more efficiently without them, whether it's building roads, setting up schools, or developing new technologies. you talk about championing the rights of individuals, how ironic, it is the state itself which is the primary oppressor of the rights of individuals.

and those "services" only exist as an excuse for the self-styled owners of the nation to remain in power, not because of some endless fountain of generosity they have.

they are rent-seekers, parasites, they want to skim off the fruit of your labor, the taxes you pay to go through their coffers so that they can have a taste of the action.

so, you are suggesting that for something to be a good idea, that it must "reign supreme"?

you would judge whether something is right and good based on what is common? really?

and yes, anarchy is indeed my preference, it's what i practice in my own life. i believe in the non aggression principle, i believe in respecting the rights of others, i believe in not supporting systems of violence such as government, and i believe in associating with and supporting others who have similar views.

"we"? who is "we"? i have not formed any government.

as for rules, rules are fine by me. however, participation in those rules must be voluntary. i don't have the right to come up with a set of rules and impose it on someone who doesn't wish to participate in them. neither does anyone else have that right.

and your approach to voting is naive and wasteful, like the single mother spending her last $5 on lottery tickets hoping the god of fortune will smile upon her and make a better future for her, instead of getting real and being responsible and using her money, time, and energy to feed her child.

as long as you see voting as the way to change, you are dis-empowering yourself, you are saying that rigged system over there will determine my future.

but that doesn't have to be the case. some of us choose to turn our backs on that captured, rigged and corrupt system.

we can choose to be creators of our own reality, to grow our own food, to transact with our own systems - barter, silver, bitcoin, local currencies - to keep our wealth out of the hands of those who would use it for violence and oppression.

we can provide for our own defence and for the education of our children.

we become the change that we are looking for.

their system does not.

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locksmithuk,
indeed, george carlin was one of the greats, he may well have done more to inform through his comedy than many of those who call themselves teachers.

i do envy you aussies in one way, though: you have the remarkable wit of clark & dawe to tear your so called politcal leaders to shreds.

i wish i understood the au references. hilarious nonetheless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV_HxDVP5Io

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@Bankers Slave,
yes, it is truly sad the way that unelected eurocrats are trying to subjugate britain into being a feudal colony of brussels.

an excellent and informative documentary on brexit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTMxfAkxfQ0

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reflector-
Well I certainly approve of nectarines, therefore, the concept of planting a nectarine tree sounds great.  Its one of my favorite fruit!

I also like creating my own reality.

I also believe in granting others free will.

I'm not so sure about anarchy, though.  I've noticed that people in general prefer security over chaos, so I suspect you'll have an uphill battle to sell the whole "anarchy is cool" proposition to the common man.

Plus, the whole thing of "a real free market never having existed at a national scale" seems to suggest that those proposing that as a national structure might be either chasing unicorns, or that there is a fatal flaw embedded deep in the design (or in human nature) that has killed it off still-born every time it might have evolved naturally.

But who knows.  Maybe we just never quite got the formula right.

39

reflector,
Your choice to plant a nectarine tree is not mutually exclusive to voting. If that were the case, I'd "vote" to plant a tree. I'm sure that the results of planting your tree will bear tastier fruit than the results of my voting.

Here's a short clip from Monty Python's Life of Brian that captures the effect of organized non-voting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUHk2RSMCS8

Is voting going to fix the system? Will it make everything wonderful? Hell, no! I really do mean it when I say it is the 2nd most worthless thing to do. Unfortunately, there is a block of people who vote for more sucre to be delivered by the government and taken from productive folks. If you don't vote, they win. They continually ramp up the largesse until the situation gets as intractable as it is now.

Be pragmatic rather than ideological. Vote against stronger government. Vote against higher taxes on anyone. Vote against the obtrusiveness of government. Will it work? Is it a foolproof solution? Hell, no!

How does not voting fix anything?

Grover

 

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A few weeks ago, nominal journalist and all-but-official Hillary supporter, Chris Mathews of MSNBC asserted that he and other talking heads of the MSM would declare Hillary the nominee prematurely to give Hillary a better chance. The idea was to call the race while the polls were still open in California - that way Hillary would have a better chance to win in a big state that she still needs.
And some organization did actually call the race yesterday. They based it on top-secret interviews of superdelegates. Hey, did you know that the superdelegates don't get to vote until the so-called "Democratic" convention in July? The media has been counting those superdelegate votes all along. And now they're saying that if Bernie Sanders tries to "change" the votes of the superdelegates he is being divisive or sexist???

I'm disappointed in the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and especially the mainstream media of the USA. How about you?